outdoor design

My guest today is a visionary landscape designer in sunny California, and as a professional outdoor designer, she loves to discuss the originating and creating functional and beautiful outdoor spaces for us to enjoy nature at its best. She is well seasoned in her discipline, for she graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Ca in 2009. She has been working in the field since 2010 mostly in residential but works on commercial projects as well. And her creative philosophy is obviously influenced by her interest in conservation and ecology as you will delightfully note in our discussion.

Terry Lin, Outer’s Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Outer shares his thoughts on Outer’s story, as well as furniture design predictions such as the impact of inflation and economic contraction on our furniture choices, to the backyard design trends we’ll be loving this year as well as giving us a how-to guide on making sustainable furniture choices and how to find and understand more eco-friendly materials.

Join us we learn some valuable lessons on how to furnish outdoor spaces, how to conceive outdoor rooms and what fabrics are appropriate for certain applications. All this of course drawn from the final sections of the famous book, Mark Hampton on Decorating.

Samantha Lee Smugala is doing important work in St. Louis.   She’s the founder of Pocketparks, a non-profit that is reimagining and reinvigorating the vacant lots that are scattered across St Louis Neighborhoods. For Samantha, it all started with a simple sketch that caught the attention of the local news and eventually propelled her to think bigger about what’s possible.

Samantha’s story behind Pocketparks is unique and entertaining.  But, it’s the challenges she faced as an entrepreneur earning the trust of others that make this episode so valuable.  Her story is full of lessons and insights that will help you grow.

A bit more about PocketParks:

Pocketparks is a non-profit organization that reimagines and redevelops unused plots of land to provide communities with active and beautiful recreational areas. Through community engagement, each park is designed to meet the specific needs of the neighborhood in which it is located. Every park incorporates three things: activity, artwork, and opportunity. Pocketparks are small, but make a big impact. By focusing on small outdoor parks, we can quickly provide a positive impact without extensive resources. Pocketparks not only offers beautiful recreational areas, but works to increase safety, boost community pride, and contribute to economic development. Pocketparks is a platform that reactivates outdoor areas to build up the ecosystem of communities and weave vibrant spaces into our urban fabric.

Established in St. Louis in 2021, Pocketparks is working to activate local communities and plans to grow into a network of parks that sprawl across the city and eventually expand to other cities and states. As a non-profit organization, Pocketparks relies on donations to support its efforts.

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