A garden kitchen is a new genre on the cusp becoming a popular addition to a well-planned property. It provides a way of immersing oneself in the garden’s realm, an easy and continuous way of experiencing nature, sunlight, trees and sky while still being protected from the elements. An open shelter, perhaps housed in a conservatory, orangery, pergola, loggia or semi-open structure that opens and closes according to climatic requirements. Whatever cover is chosen, it acts like an environmental filter; the idea is to be comfortable but as open to nature as possible.

It is important to realize that it is not a replacement for a kitchen. It is an additional facility, a rough luxe version where you can forget worries about storage where the furniture is plants as well as functional pieces of the carpentered variety. The locus is maybe still cooking, ideally with an open fire or with a suitable appliance for barbecuing but its companion function, and perhaps most critical one, is its role for outdoor congregation, either around a fire or with a table – placed in the open or under shade or weather protection of some kind. The third use is a more private one – communing with nature, de-stressing and enjoying the garden’s poetic and aesthetic pleasures.

The gardens that surround our homes are often divorced from the rooms inside and out of sync with views from key windows. Kitchens and living rooms are often designed to promote internal priorities such as maximizing size, serious décor work, circulation or, historically, making a fireplace work. According to research, the average Westerner spends 80% of their time indoors. The expectation our bodies have accumulated through evolution is the reverse.

In our search for well-being we need to develop living habits that allow us to be outside for much longer. We are hard-wired, as neuroscientists such as John Zeisel tell us, for prolonged exposure to the flowers, plants, green space and sky. Access to nature, as well as exposure to long views and seasonal routines, keeps us calm. Part of my work at JG Studios has been to develop a concept I have termed “instinct-based design”.

Creating outdoor kitchens is part of that programme. By listening to our instincts we can make kitchens and gardens that work together and make us feel good. The effort, time and expenditure that people lavish on their gardens is often wasted as the rooms of the house where most of time is spent are not visible.

Without French doors, growing beautiful flowers, trimming hedges, mowing the lawn, filling pots, building ponds and construct rose arbors’ seem a little wasted. ‘You own what you see’ has been attributed to Capability Brown. How many of us have that pleasure in our gardens?

JG Studios have been asked recently to design a number of garden kitchens and will be exhibiting at the London Chelsea Flower Show (25th-29th May) with Alitex - makers of conservatories and greenhouses and endorsed by the National Trust. It will be a great opportunity to explore the new concept of the garden kitchen further.

Our desire for home design that speaks to the heart and gives comfort to the soul has never been stronger. Last weekend at Grand Designs Live, I joined designer, writer and TV presenter Kevin McCloud; Habitat creative director Theo Williams; and designer, author and TV presenter Naomi Cleaver in a panel, “Home is where the heart is: interior design with emotion.” (It’s not a coincidence the name of the seminar is eponymous with the title of Ilse Crawford’s recent book).

Kevin talked about his new book 43 Principles of Home, while Naomi discussed her own title, Joy of Home, and Theo Williams talked about the new direction for Habitat. I chose 10 books that highlight thinkers who have valuable insight into planning our homes, but who, for one reason or another, have not become prominent voices in the world of design. Here’s the list:

1. A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David Freeman.

The antidote for those who want total control over their environments. Mess, it turns out, can be good for us. There are hidden benefits to disorder. Brace yourself for some undoing of shibboleths.

2. World of Goods: An anthropology of consumption by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood.

Our motives for purchasing goods are a thinly disguised communications system. We want to tell ourselves and others about who we are through buying things from clothes to furnishings.

3. Happiness by Richard Layard.
Fascinating, unorthodox insights into where, when. how and with whom we feel happy. Based on research from psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, sociologists and philosophers.

4. I’m Still Here by John Zeisel.
Zeisel is a leading neuroscientist and sociologist whose advanced approach to designing environments for Alzheimer’s sufferers offers many clues for home design.

5. Healing Spaces by Esther M. Steinberg.
Readable account covering the science of well-being and place based on the way our brains, emotions and hormones are hard wired. Moving and accessible with a lot of joined up thinking.

6. Wabi Sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers by Leonard Koren.

The Japanese concept of imperfection and understanding of nature’s explained as key to beauty, time and authentic environments. Straightforward language to the point of poetry and truly inspiring ideas.

7. The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.

We are hard wired to art. Its not a nicety, more a necessity and it’s a relief to see this set out in such a comprehensive way. Using Darwin’s evolution theory as a basis, Dutton explains art as a motivation for creativity, our admiration for skill and our need for transcendence.

8. Alexander Technique by John Gray.

Explains its core tenet of how moving with economy can be achieved and its benefit for long-term body maintenance and well-being. Not quite yoga for westerners but along those lines and taught at many performing arts schools as essential for enhancing the performance of the body’s architecture.

9. The Craftsman by Richard Sennett.

Redefining craftsmanship in a civilised society through rigorous and original analysis; from the definition of 10,000 hours of work, skills that take you beyond technical ability, the appreciation of the hand and to exploring the philosophy applied to making things. It speaks to both practitioners and users alike.

10. House as a mirror of self by Clare Cooper Marcus.

Exploration of bonding with your home and garden, as a child and adult; what self-expression means as you evolve your relationship with home, living and working, privacy and going beyond the house as ego to the call of the soul. Cooper Marcus narrates moving interviews many householders from her base in San Francisco to form the basis of her research.

Fairy tales and children’s stories, remote though they seem for professionals offering advice or householders seeking practical improvement to their homes, are great source material. Often being stuck in the humdrum of our everyday lives, we need renewal. As a kitchen designer, I am often faced with the challenge of unblocking my clients and discouraging them from rigidly copying pictures they see in magazines, So is it possible to get real, practical ideas from what appear to be absurd fantasies? Transposing ideas is tremendously fun and challenging. And ethereal is good, as keeping the imagination loose brings flexibility to thinking.

Where better to start than with Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows or the Secret Garden? Imagine a house with a hidden, metal studded front door hidden in the bushes. We recently created just such a passageway for a client on the coast near Chichester, England. Although it doesn’t involve a magical kingdom, the key idea was building an extension that hides behind an old garden wall. Literal translation of ideas is one approach but another is capturing of atmospheres and events, similar to the way scenes from films capture an emotion or experience we identify with.

There are plentiful examples where imaginary scenes can be translated into reality. Who has not thought of Aladdin’s cave when design a snug, cosy media room or Rapunzel’s tower or Treasure Island’s tree house when creating a bedroom? Robert Adam wanted to be an artist before becoming an architect and was inspired by Gothic fantasies, old ruins, imaginary places and tales of old Italian buildings. Places, studying buildings from history and previous lifetimes where children’s stories are often set are default starting points.

Rarely are children’s stories set in the present. The imagination seems to work better in the past although science fiction would argue for the future. An example of such a children’s story is Louis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is full of extreme spatial experiences such as Alice shrinking and falling fast through the rabbit’s hole, landing in a hallway with seemingly unending locked doors. She is puzzled, thwarted and confused. Ever had this experience with entering buildings? Carroll’s humour and his surrealist creation bring such pleasure. To escape is a great release; to dream and not quite understand is in some ways like visiting Venice, Machu Picchu or Gaudi’s Parc Guell.

One of the most memorable scenes in the book is the Mad Hatter’s Tea party, with the long table, white cloth, orderly cups and saucers offset by egotistical, high impact companions with extreme clothes. Everyone is chattering but no one is engaging in real conversation. No room, cries the March Hare, Mad Hatter and Doormouse There’s plenty, retorts Alice as she takes a seat. Alice quickly retreats from the madness and re-enters the wood.

After a consultation with the Caterpillar, she soon comes upon a house where the Duchess is feeding a baby. As our heroine enters the kitchen, the cook takes the cauldron of soup off the fire and then showers Alice with saucepans, plates and dishes. Taking no notice of the flying debris, the Queen announces her famous command, ‘Off with her head!’.

Tenniel’s illustration of this scene is dominated by the Queen’s oversized head, but you can see the vestiges of a kitchen around them. I speculate what kind of kitchen Lewis Carroll’s and his illustrator would have made for Alice. Witty chaos maybe, unpredictable meals made of strange Marinetti-like ingredients, a lot of talking, including speculation about the world’s geometry, and strange Harry Potter-like magic going on in the background. Plates flying through the air, magic carpets, talking chandeliers, clocks that run backwards and anthropomorphic animals gathered around the table.

Throughout Carroll’s story, the accelerated speed of events and unexpected changes of scale provide challenging experiences of space. Fast moving conversations and a variety of perching places remind me of the joys of large families and big rooms. The open fire and the cat curled up on the floor suggest a sort of normality.

If anyone reading this wants to sketch their imaginary Alice in Wonderland kitchen, I will post it here. Meanwhile I have booked my tickets for the Portsmouth premiere of Tim Burton’s cinematic interpretation of Carroll’s tale. I can’t wait to see how Burton and his creative team have imagined the interiors, although in some ways I would like to keep my unformed and innocent imaginings. Carroll’s writing, although energetic and full of colour and content, left an openness to the imagination that makes room for all of us.