A Designer’s Multi-Zone Garden at a 1936 Colonial

Design consultant Sarah Meyer transformed the overgrown, divided backyard of her 1936 brick colonial in Vancouver, Washington into a series of outdoor "rooms" designed for a family that hosts all the time.

When they bought the house, a wall of house-tall rhododendron split the property in two, and the only patio sat in the far corner — a long walk from the kitchen every time someone forgot a napkin.

Sarah and her husband started fresh, anchoring a new patio right off the back of the house around a fireplace they built themselves, where they gather for dinners and s'mores with the kids through winter.

From there the whole garden grew: long tables repurposed from her siblings' weddings, a chippy old table used as a food station, a quirky drink station with a water tap her husband added, a fenced vegetable garden where the old patio used to be, and even a badminton court.

Petite hand-made French doors off the kitchen — replacing a window — tie it all together, looking, as Sarah always intends, like they were always there.