written by: Brad Mee
Hotter than ever, fire features and their innovative creators are transforming backyards into outdoor retreats across Utah. What better way to savor summer evenings than by relaxing with friends and family in front of a fire’s glow?
For a contemporary home in Park City, Landform Design Group’s Jayson King created a sleek, in-ground fire strip to anchor a small, front yard patio. The modern fire feature amps up the curb appeal and offers a quiet place to take in mountain views before retreating to a larger outdoor living area in back, where a second fire feature lights up the landscape.
In a Holladay home’s backyard, the pros at Big Rock Landscaping installed a gas-fed, ground-level fire feature and encircled it with large rocks to create the natural look and feel of a gather-round campfire.
A variety of seating options including a pair of deep-seated porch swings gather around a raised fire pit on the patio of a Midway Valley family home. Jackson & Leroy teamed with Artistic Stone Masonry to clad the large fire feature in stone to visually link it to the home’s handsome stone and painted-shiplap exterior.
Beneath a large pergola capped with retractable awnings, Northland Design positioned a corten steel linear fire trough alongside the outdoor seating area of a Park City home. The flames warm the space without detracting from carefully framed views. The designers chose plain, warmly tinted concrete floors to visually balance the exterior’s busy stone pattern.
A freestanding fireplace adds structure and architectural strength to a gravel-based sitting area located off a Lehi home’s main patio. Jackson & Leroy custom builders and Establish Design carefully orchestrated varied brick patterns, unrefined mortar and a painted finish to help create the fireplace’s time-honored design. Symmetrically positioned furnishings and tree rows strengthen the balanced, classic style.
In Salt Lake City’s Sugar House neighborhood, Chip Galloway of Utah Landscaping maximized a backyard space by extending a deck from the home where a pergola-covered dining and hot tub area steps down to a fire-centered lounge below. The stone-covered wall supporting the deck also performs as the back to a built-in, L-shaped bench surrounding the powder-coated aluminum firebox. A sunshade doubles as a screen for viewing outdoor movies throughout summer. A planter of thriving oat grass softens the design’s hard edges.
In scenic Springdale, an outdoor fireplace is uniquely integrated into the patio wall of a contemporary home designed by McQuay Architects. The team designed the firebox with a low, horizontal profile and faced it in stone to ensure that it visually melds into the spectacular desert landscape and to prevent it from blocking views from the broad patio and the home’s interior.
In a shaded slope of an existing hillside, designer Jayson King of Landform Design Group surrounded a stone-clad fire pit with deep-cushioned lounge chairs to create a steps-from-the-hot tub retreat on a terraced Sandy-area property. He planted the surrounding garden with succulents, mosses, host as and natural grasses.
A stone wall and tailored boxwood hedges create a sense of privacy for a backyard patio designed as an extension of a Holladay home. Casual sling lounge chairs invite family and friends to settle around a raised fire pit centered on a large window overlooking it. Design by Tuck Landscape.
In Provo, Northland Design created a raised, stone planter wall that doubles as the back of a built-in, L-shaped bench that partially frames a corten steel linear fire trough. Handsome lounge chairs provide additional, flexible seating. The contractor, Sunline Landscaping, worked with the homeowner to select concrete patio pavers that resemble blue stone.
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See more inside the Summer 2017 issue.
