5 of Our Favorite Outdoor Retreats

With rising temps and longer days, we can’t help but dream of these luxurious natural havens.

1. Created by architectural firm Henry Sprott Long and Associates and decorator Phoebe Howard, this pool house was designed to be used year-round. Howard chose elegant Kingsley-Bate chaise lounges and ceramic garden seats for the English-style pool pavilion, mixing teak and porcelain to bring the look of indoors outside.

2. Leafy arches covered with New Dawn climbing roses and Will Goodwin clematis create a romantic walkway in this parterre garden, which designer Beth Elsey nurtured from non-existent to stunning. The result is a cocooning English-style garden that produces a calming effect.

3. Landscape designer Alex Smith transformed a Dunwoody garden and dated pool into a lush oasis. Trusting Smith completely, the client gave him a catre-blanche, allowing the designer to go full-force with visual presentation and aesthetic appeal. “When you’re in the garden, it doesn’t feel like you’re in a residential setting,” Smith says. “It’s more like a private haven.”

4. Considering Bill Musso is a designer and Bryan Coke is a gardener extraordinaire, it’s no surprise that the lush gardens of their Italian-style Druid Hills home are the ultimate getaway. Taking inspiration from Roman architecture, they cultivated dramatic vistas from the main room of the house, incorporating boxwoods, Calla lilies and hydrangeas, soaring palms and crape myrtles, classic statuary and fountains—with creeping fig and clematis defining the courtyard walls.

5. For Rick Anderson, when it came to designing his own home, the landscape architect carefully considered the architecture (by Yong Pak and Francis Kirkpatrick of Pak Heydt & Associates) and landscaping as a whole, creating a meticulously planned, calming oasis. Anderson created outdoor rooms to break up the yard, designating space with symmetrically placed trees, hedges and other greenery.

Celebrate spring in the South at the AH&L’s inaugural Southeastern Designer Showhouse & Gardens, a showcase of the region’s leading design-industry talents. southeasternshowhouse.com

For more outdoor inspiration, tour these stunning outdoor rooms.