Friluftsliv: What the Nordic Philosophy of Open-Air Living Can Teach Us About Garden Design

Friluftsliv, pronounced free-loofts-liv, means open-air living. It’s a Norwegian word that does not translate neatly into English, but once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere in good garden design. It was first used by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in the 1850s and has since become central to how Scandinavian cultures relate to the outdoors. Not as a destination you visit when the weather is good, but as a fundamental part of daily life, something you inhabit regardless of the season.

In Norway, Sweden and Denmark, children play outside in rain and snow as a matter of course. Adults eat outdoors well into autumn wrapped in blankets around a fire. Gardens are not decorative spaces that get packed away in October. They are extensions of the home that are used, properly used, all year round.

As a garden designer, I find this philosophy genuinely useful. Not as a trend or an aesthetic direction, but as a framework for thinking about what a garden is actually for and how to design it so it serves you properly rather than just looking beautiful in photographs taken in July.

What Friluftsliv Actually Means for Garden Design

The core idea behind Friluftsliv is that time spent outdoors, regardless of weather or season, is restorative. Not in a wellness-industry way but in a very practical, grounded sense. Fresh air, natural light, contact with growing things, the sounds and rhythms of an outdoor environment. These things matter and a garden should be designed to give you access to them as much of the year as possible.

What this means in practice is a shift away from designing a garden purely around how it will look at its peak, typically midsummer, towards designing it around how you will actually live in it. Where will you sit in April when it is still cold but the light is coming back? Where will the fire be on a November evening? What will be growing in February when you look out of the kitchen window?

These are not the questions most people ask when they start planning a garden. But they are the questions that determine whether a garden becomes a genuine part of your life or a space you pass through between June and September.

Year-Round Structure: The Foundation of a Friluftsliv Garden

The first principle I apply when designing a garden with year-round use in mind is structure. Not the imposed geometry of a formal garden but the quiet backbone that holds a space together when the flowers are gone.

In a Nordic-influenced garden this comes from evergreen planting, the shapes of trees and shrubs in winter, the texture of bark and seed heads left standing rather than cut back, the way light moves across a well-placed stone path or timber deck on a winter afternoon. The naturalistic planting movement has pushed this thinking into mainstream garden design in recent years, and rightly so. A garden that has structure and interest in January is a garden you will actually use in January.

Practically, this means including a proportion of evergreen structure in every planting scheme. Clipped forms, whether box, yew, pittosporum or the many alternatives to box that have become necessary since box blight, provide the bones of a garden through every season. They also create a sense of calm and order that makes a garden feel settled rather than temporary.

Grasses are another structural element that earn their place all year. Many of the best ornamental grasses look more beautiful in winter than in summer, their seed heads catching low light and frost in a way that is genuinely worth designing around. Combined with layered border planting that includes something at every height and season, a garden can feel alive and interesting even on the darkest days.

Designing for All Weathers, Not Just the Good Ones

The Nordic relationship with weather is perhaps the most useful thing Friluftsliv offers British garden design. The Scandinavian saying, there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing, applies equally to gardens. There is no such thing as a garden that cannot be used in October. There is only a garden that has not been designed for October.

Shelter is the most significant factor here. A garden with no protection from wind, rain or cold will sit unused for six months of the year regardless of how beautifully it is planted. This does not mean a conservatory or a full outdoor room, though those are worth considering. It means thinking about where the prevailing wind comes from and using planting, fencing or a well-positioned pergola to create a sheltered microclimate. A corner that faces south-west with some protection at the back will be usable in conditions that would drive you back inside from an exposed patio.

Fire is the other element that extends outdoor use significantly. A fire pit or alfresco fireplace is not a luxury addition. In a Friluftsliv garden it is almost a necessity. There is something deeply restorative about sitting outside around a fire in autumn or winter that no amount of indoor comfort quite replicates. Designing the space around it, generous seating, surfaces at the right height, somewhere to put a drink, makes the difference between a fire that gets used and one that becomes an ornament.

Lighting matters too. The quality of garden lighting determines how usable the space is after dark, which in winter means from about four in the afternoon onwards. Warm, layered lighting at low level, path lights, candle lanterns, string lights between trees or over a pergola, creates an atmosphere that draws you outside rather than keeping you in. Harsh overhead floodlights do the opposite.

Planting That Connects You to the Seasons

One of the things I love most about Friluftsliv as a philosophy is that it asks you to pay attention to nature as it actually is, not as you wish it would be. That means noticing what is beautiful about February rather than waiting for May. It means finding the garden interesting in every season rather than treating winter as something to get through.

This changes how I approach planting design. Rather than building a scheme around peak summer impact, I think about what is happening in the garden in every month of the year. What is the first thing to flower in February? What holds its structure through frost? What gives the garden warmth and colour in November when most things have gone over?

Spring bulbs planted in generous drifts give you something to look forward to from January onwards. Snowdrops, hellebores and early narcissus are the first signs that the garden is waking up and they matter more than people realise to the experience of the garden in late winter. Hardy plants that require little maintenance but provide seasonal interest across the year are the backbone of a garden designed for living in rather than admiring.

Summer should not be neglected but it should not be the only season you are designing for. The most satisfying gardens I have designed are ones where the client can find something to enjoy, or at least something interesting to look at, in every month of the year. That quality of continuous engagement with the garden is very much at the heart of what Friluftsliv means.

The RHS advocates for naturalistic planting styles that support biodiversity and year-round interest, and it is an approach that aligns closely with the Nordic garden design tradition.

Materials, Simplicity and the Nordic Aesthetic

Nordic garden design has a very particular visual quality. It is not minimalist in a stark or empty sense but it is uncluttered. Every element earns its place. Natural materials, timber, stone, gravel, are used in their most honest form rather than being dressed up or embellished. The palette tends towards the muted, soft greys, warm greens, the natural tones of wood and stone, with planting providing seasonal colour rather than hard landscaping.

This restraint is intentional. A Friluftsliv garden is not designed to impress. It is designed to be in. The difference between those two things is significant. A garden designed to impress requires constant maintenance to stay at its best. A garden designed to be in can look slightly wild and imperfect and feel all the better for it.

Permeable surfaces, gravel, stone sets, timber decking with gaps, connect you more directly to the ground than sealed paving. They also tend to age better, developing the kind of patina that makes a garden feel established rather than newly installed. Choosing the right patio materials for a garden you intend to use year-round is worth thinking carefully about. Smooth polished surfaces become slippery in frost and rain. Textured natural stone or timber with a non-slip finish stays usable in all conditions.

The Nordic Garden Colour Palette

Colour in a Nordic garden is quiet. Not absent, but restrained in a way that feels intentional rather than cautious. The palette draws directly from the Scandinavian landscape. Soft greys, warm whites, muted sage greens, the bleached tones of driftwood and pale stone, the dark warmth of charred timber. Nothing shouts. Everything relates.

For hard landscaping and structures, natural materials left to weather and age are preferred over anything too polished or uniform. Timber fencing and pergolas in a warm grey-brown, whether naturally weathered or treated with a light grey or charcoal stain, sit quietly in the garden rather than competing with it. Corten steel, used for raised beds or simple sculptural elements, develops a warm rust tone over time that works beautifully alongside grasses and naturalistic planting.

For painted surfaces, fences, garden buildings and boundary walls, the Nordic palette leans towards muted, slightly dusty tones. Soft blue-grey, sage, deep forest green, warm off-white and charcoal all work well. Farrow and Ball’s Mizzle, Pigeon, Down Pipe and Pelt are all at home in this aesthetic. Little Greene’s Sage Green or Sap Green sit naturally against naturalistic planting. The key is to avoid anything too bright or too clean. A slightly chalky, slightly desaturated finish is closer to the Nordic spirit than a glossy contemporary tone.

Choosing a garden colour scheme that holds across all seasons means selecting tones that look as good in October as they do in June. Warmer tones in the planting, copper grasses, amber seed heads, russet leaves, work with the muted structural palette rather than fighting it. In summer, white and soft yellow flowers add light without disrupting the calm of the scheme.

Plants for a Friluftsliv Garden: What to Grow and Why

Plant selection in a Friluftsliv-inspired garden is guided by one simple principle: every plant should earn its place across more than one season. A plant that flowers for three weeks in June and contributes nothing for the rest of the year is not pulling its weight in a garden designed for year-round living. The plants I return to again and again in Nordic-influenced schemes are those that offer multiple seasons of interest, require relatively little intervention and look beautiful in all weathers, including frost.

Structural evergreens. Yew, box alternatives such as Ilex crenata and Sarcococca, and Pittosporum tenuifolium provide the year-round backbone that holds a scheme together. Clipped into simple forms rather than elaborate topiary, they give the garden calm and structure through the winter months when everything else has retreated.

Ornamental grasses. Calamagrostis x acutiflora Karl Foerster is one of my most-used plants in any naturalistic scheme. It stands upright through winter, its pale seed heads catching frost and low light beautifully. Molinia caerulea Transparent is another favourite, its airy flower heads creating movement in even the lightest breeze. Deschampsia cespitosa forms soft mounds of fine-textured foliage that look particularly beautiful with morning light behind them. These grasses are not cut back until late winter, which means they are working in the garden for ten months of the year.

Perennials for autumn and winter interest. Penstemon and Sedum (now correctly Hylotelephium) hold their structure well into winter and are particularly valuable in the transition from late summer to autumn. Rudbeckia fulgida Goldsturm flowers from late summer into October and its seed heads persist through winter, providing food for birds as well as visual interest. Echinacea purpurea does the same, its dark cone centres standing well through frost.

Spring interest. The first signs of life matter enormously in a garden designed for year-round use. Galanthus (snowdrops) naturalised under trees or in borders signal the end of winter in a way that feels genuinely meaningful after months of frost. Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconites) flower alongside them in late January and February, their bright yellow flowers something to genuinely look forward to. Hellebores follow, flowering from February through to April in shades from white to deep plum, and they are among the most reliably beautiful plants in a winter garden.

Trees for seasonal structure. A well-chosen tree anchors a garden and provides seasonal change that no other plant can replicate. Betula (silver birch) is the most quintessentially Nordic choice, its white bark luminous in winter light and its small leaves casting a dappled shade that is never too heavy in summer. Amelanchier lamarckii gives four seasons of interest: white flowers in spring, good summer foliage, brilliant autumn colour and a graceful bare branch structure in winter. For smaller gardens, Prunus serrula has beautiful mahogany bark that looks striking all year.

Naturalistic planting for movement and wildness. The naturalistic planting movement, inspired by designers like Piet Oudolf, aligns closely with the Friluftsliv spirit. Loose drifts of perennials and grasses that move in the wind, self-seed gently and look as beautiful in their spent forms as in full flower. Verbena bonariensis, Sanguisorba officinalis, Achillea and Astrantia all contribute to this quality of relaxed abundance that never feels neglected.

Wildlife planting. A Friluftsliv garden is not a sterile space. It is part of a wider ecosystem and planting that supports wildlife, pollinators, birds and hedgehogs, connects the garden to the natural world in a way that feels very true to the philosophy. Native species like Digitalis purpurea, Verbascum and Geranium pratense attract bees and butterflies naturally. Designing for biodiversity and designing for beauty are not in conflict. In a naturalistic scheme they are the same thing.

Wellbeing Is the Point

At its heart Friluftsliv is about health and wellbeing. The Norwegian and Swedish research on the benefits of time spent outdoors is extensive. Reduced cortisol levels, improved sleep, better mood, increased attention span. These are measurable, documented outcomes of regular time in nature, not aspirational marketing language.

Designing a garden for wellbeing means taking seriously the idea that the garden is not just a space you maintain but a space that maintains you. A garden that draws you outside regularly, in different seasons and different weathers, is doing its job. One that sits unused for most of the year, however beautiful it might look in the right conditions, is not.

This is the most useful thing Friluftsliv offers as a design framework. Not a set of aesthetic rules but a purpose. The garden is for living in. All of it, all year, in whatever weather arrives. Design it accordingly and it will give back more than any amount of purely decorative thinking.

If you are thinking about redesigning your garden and want to approach it from this perspective, a free consultation with our garden design team is a good place to start. Our garden design service covers everything from the initial brief and planting scheme to the full design pack you need to bring the project to life.