Pergola Perfection

Interior designer Susan Turner created a patio at her Peterborough home to make to most of the bucolic setting amidst the highlands, ponds and a meadow with cows. Her vision was to re-create the open, airy feeling she knew from growing up in the South.

Turner had her collection of vintage 1940s wrought iron furniture painted a grayish-blue, then upholstered in marine fabric with French blue piping. The concrete floor was painted with a high-gloss deck paint in robin’s egg blue.

The four nine-foot columns were painted with a whimsical touch once patio and pergola were complete. Several factors influenced the design, including the colors of her mother’s treasured Florida pottery collection, which Turner displays in clusters around the patio, as well as French pots brimming with fuchsia impatiens. Turner brought the pottery to her local Benjamin Moore dealer, where an expert was able to match the greens and pale blues perfectly and blend custom colors for her.

Turner commissioned Monadnock-area muralist Holly Alderman to paint the towering columns. Using an oversized custom stencil with a peony leaves pattern she called Palm Beach Pillars, Alderman meticulously layered the mint greens and Caribbean blues.

Sheers, custom-made by Tammy Atherton of Greenfield out of mosquito netting, were hung — for the ultimate in dreamy atmosphere. NH

For more patio decorating tips, pick up the June issue New Hampshire Magazine at a newsstand
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