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Community Corner

Porch Potatoes

On the front porch, no text messaging allowed!

Back East, a porch is a necessity not an option.  It’s all about the weather. Midwesteners rely on their porches as they wait outside in the pouring rain for a ride, and in the Old Country, you need a place to wipe winter’s black slush from your boots and pull ice balls from the dog’s paws.  In the South, screened-in porches offer refuge from merciless bugs and provide a place to gossip.

Here in Studio City, porches play third fiddle to garden and landscape design. Otherwise thoughtful designs peter out at the front stoop.  It’s easy to find a porch in the Valley; we spotted 180-degree-wraparounds, a grand veranda, loggias, porticos, vestibules, stoops both large and small. However, most are undecorated and underutilized.

Impoverished porch design in Los Angeles has a lot to do with So Cal’s car-dependent culture. People run in and out of their vehicles but rarely stroll down the streets, so there’s not much opportunity for talking to, or taking in, a passing cavalcade of neighbors from the vantage point of a porch-front perch.

Then there’s the texting. And play dates. And the weather. Who needs shelter from the storms when there aren’t any?

In the mid-1800s, landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing envisioned the front porch as a uniquely American form of "transitional space between the private world of the family and the public realm of the street."

Think Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer. A porch is a place to talk politics, discuss ideas, tell jokes, spin yarns.

Porch sitting is a form of socializing. NPR ran a series on porches which became a necessity before air conditioning and were the place where iced tea and chit chat were served up.

After WWII, architects regarded porches as an afterthought, delegating a token slab of indecorous concrete as entryways that proved too small for hanging out. More recently, builders have snubbed the “howdy neighbor” subtext that a good porch represents by outfitting every other new McMansion with trendy gun turret-like towers. 

That castle/moat motif runs counter to the New Urbanism movement, which argues that large, street-facing porches help build a sense of community.  In fact, some master-planned villages like New Harmony, Florida require front porches as an architectural must-have. 

And even if you don’t have time to sit and chat, porches proffer all kinds of design opportunities. Hang a medallion on its bare wall. Plants such as maidenhead fern and coleus could thrive in its shade. Given enough space, it's a grand location for  a fountain, rocking chairs, bistro set, a wood sculpture, a buddha or any number of statement pieces.

Or cater to your Inner Misanthrope with the strategic placement of a cactus or hanging plant.

Bette Marinoff’s porch on Kelsey Street presents itself as an expansive, charming shelter. Just don’t call it design. “I did nothing much more than buy this wooden garden caddy at Paper Goose and fill it with pine cones,” she says. “I thought it would look good here on the porch, and I guessed right.”

Weathered gray/blue coloring provides a focal point to the three black wicker chairs that simultaneously complete the porch and complement the house’s architecture. Marinoff says, “My husband has lived in the house 28 years. It was all a hill of grass, leading right up to the front door.  Six years ago we re-did everything.”

The improvements include a grand driveway and wide terraced steps, but nothing beats the porch that speaks the international language of human-scaled design: “Welcome, stranger.”

WHAT TO DO:

Keep the theme of your outdoor landscaping consistent with the porch design and plants.

Keep it tidy. The front porch should not be a catch-all.

Use the walls. You can have beautiful furniture pieces, but bare walls are unforgiving. 

For a smaller vestibule, add a bell, a decorative mailbox or porchlight, or a half round (flat-backed) wire plant holder lined with moss and filled with soil and a pretty ivy geranium. For a wider porch consider the classics—a swing, bench, rockers.

STEAL THIS IDEA:
If you do not have an “official” porch, create a pergola out from the roof, lay down some slate tiles and plant mandevilla or trumpet vine. For a little bling, hang a chandelier.

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