Three interpretations of a classic California style.

For many southern Californians, living well outdoors is second nature. In a place where sunshine is as plentiful as air, a garden is like another room of the house, with sheltering walls and pillowy seats. True, we.re not all so climatically blessed. But during the warm season in any region, this sort of room makes sense: If your garden is comfortable and thoughtfully furnished -- with places to nap, eat, and rest your feet -- you can learn to live in it quite happily, doing most of what you would otherwise do indoors.

This idea is hardly new. Ancient Greeks and Romans lounged in garden rooms. But Californians have taken the concept further than most. In Los Angeles, where architecture runs the gamut from Craftsman-style cottages to Spanish bungalows to modern cubes, people put up pergolas, construct courtyards, and train vines to create alfresco rooms. They relax, work, and cook outside. In fact, the modern outdoor room was California's invention, designed for a postwar 1950s culture in which homeowners prized their leisure and wanted to loaf outdoors instead of weed.

Two mid-century California garden books -- Garrett Eckbo's Landscape for Living (1950) and Thomas Church's Gardens Are for People (1955) -- laid out the model. In response to new, simple homes with open plans and glass walls, the designers proposed a streamlined yet stylish yard. Eckbo described it as "an arena, volume, background, and shelter for human life and activity; Church, as adjunct to the functions of the house." Contrasting an earlier style -- descended from Victorian landscapes where nature was shown off and admired -- these "new gardens," Church wrote, stressed "peace and ease." They were practical and functional, providing shelter, seating, and storage.

These gardens were often set right behind the house, with wings wrapping around them and sliding glass doors blurring the line between indoors and out. Such flowing space can be seductive. It encourages party guests to drift outside with drinks. And it visually draws the garden inside, shaping interior rooms with leafy motifs and sunny color schemes. Interiors affect the garden room, as well. Outdoor furnishings are visible from within, so it makes sense to extend indoor decorating themes, to dress garden rooms in similar styles, materials, and forms.

A garden that's almost part of the house may be seen and used more than other areas in a landscape, but there can also be something enticing about a distant "room" that you actually have to stroll to. Once there, you find yourself surrounded by foliage, looking back at your house rather than out from it. Of course, this arrangement is not as convenient, especially if you.re serving drinks or food. For that, you must plan ahead, or outfit your room to include necessities from the house: tables that can store glasses and trays, candles for after dark, and perhaps an outdoor fireplace to take the chill off the night.

There's a magic to dining under the stars or having breakfast beside a pond. The three settings on these pages demonstrate some of the possibilities of garden rooms. The first is a casual-modern interpretation. The second harks back to the 1930s, when the movies inspired a glamorous style called Hollywood Regency. The last, and smallest, has a Pacific Rim look that shows what you can do with a few spare, Asian-inspired details.

In each, we have incorporated elements that make it comfortable to be outside: Awnings provide sun protection; wheeled furnishings add flexibility to tight spaces; broad chair arms create perches for drinks; solution-dyed acrylic cloth is fade-resistant and cotton-soft to the touch. Just because you.re in the garden, you don.t have to rough it. Relaxing is key. Enjoying the breeze. Smelling the flowers. Living -- really living -- outdoors.