Building an Unconventional Fire Pit

When we began building our garden for our new house we consulted a landscape architect to help us focus our ideas. One of the things we most wanted was a fire pit. Our landscape architect conceived of a parterre beside our pool surrounded with Boxwoods with a fire pit in the center. When we were building the garden we pulled a gas line over to where the fire pit would be and then covered it over with a large tile until we could save the money to create our fire pit. The reason we chose to use gas is it allows you to have a fire pit with little mess and on demand. Also, if you have bad allergies or asthma gas certainly makes for a better choice.

It was up to us to come up with the concept for the fire pit. We took to Pinterest and looked for a design that would complement our French style garden. We knew we wanted something unconventional. One of the most beautiful we had seen was at the Saint Regis in Deer Park, Utah. This fire simply emerges from the ground around large boulders with pebbles surrounding the rocks. We felt like this was too rustic for our home and worried about fire safety with children.

Most fire pits are rustic, constructed of brick, but because our garden near the house is so formal we decided we wanted a large urn to serve as our recepticle. This proved more daunting than I would have thought as a large Fireproof urn was very hard to find. So it was on to AmericasMart in Atlanta to visit all of the garden vendors to find a large urn that could serve as a fire pit for us. When I was just about to give up, I found a company in San Antonio, Texas that could custom mold a large urn for me out of a fire resistant concrete. After several months the urn was ready to ship. Then once in place we had to save up more money to buy a gas burner. Because the urn is such a focal point in the garden we did not want to have ceramic logs in our fire pit. Instead we wanted something that would look attractive when the fire pit was not in use as it would be most of the time. Pebbles seemed to be the best option, so we worked with our landscape architect to come up with fire proof pebbles to cover the burner. All of our hard work over several months finally paid off when we roasted s'mores outside with our children and ate around our new fire pit.

Having a fire pit in your yard is a great way to extend your living space during colder months and get family and friends outside. Inexpensive receptacles are available at your local box store like Lowes and Home Depot. Use yours as an opportunity to rid your yard of sticks and wood or run a gas line as we did and create a celebratory atmosphere on any night.

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