Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home
By Julie Moir Messervy & Sarah Susanka

As both a gardener and a fan of the Not So Big House movement, I eagerly sought out this book. Unfortunately this book was horribly disappointing.

This book is frustrating to a homeowner: in other books there were suggestions that could be used for renovating—here much time is taken up with dream landscapes with fabulous views and hill top sites. The book constantly reassures us that “Not so big doesn’t necessarily mean small,” because so many of these landscapes are measured in acres, and the house that go with them are gargantuan!

The authors have no concept of what normal homeowners have to work with–fences aren’t even mentioned until halfway through the book! They actually bemoan the “great challenge” of landscaping a home that had neighbors on three sides. The authors give concepts to work towards, with little explanation, or advice on how to achieve them, even in a dream landscape.

Their photographer, Grey Crawford, is horrible! He does not illustrate the concepts with his photos. Not only are the photos mostly useless as illustrations, but he also employs “trick” shots: for instance, in one photo, a countertop reflection makes it appear as though there are floor to ceiling windows when actually the windows only cover the top half of the wall. He and the editors are more interested in pretty shots than in demonstrating the text.

There are few good take-aways from Outside the Not So Big House. One good suggestion is to align furniture with best angle of view: if a window frames a neighbor’s house and tree, angle the furniture in the room to face the tree. Also, they suggest that you place garden focal points along interior axes and where they will be framed from inside the house by windows in order to extend the visual space out.

Outside the Not So Big House actually contradicts Sarah Susanka’s previous advice: for example: frameless windows and door are advocated in this book, but panned in Creating the Not So Big House. Several gardens are so exposed that no one would possibly feel comfortable there: this contradicts her previous Not So Big House “standards” that recommend that ceiling heights be in proportion to the rest of the room, an that shelter should be created around activities. I suspect that Julie Moir Messervy actually wrote this book, and Sarah Susanka just skimmed it and wrote a couple sidebars. It doesn’t really add anything to a Not So Big design.