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Like Mother, Like Daughter Joy Tribout and Tammy Tribout Caruso of Joy Tribout Interiors believe in blending your indoor and outdoor spaces with pops of color and sparkling pizzazz.

Tips from the Mother/Daughter Team: Pull colors from rooms with an outdoor view and use them in the landscape of your home and outdoor living spaces. “I love to see a lot of color, especially bright color, from the inside looking out – and see them as one palette,” says Joy. Continue your personality (and your indoor personality) to the outdoors for a complete look – an extension of your home’s interior. “I love helping our clients with all of the finishing touches,” says Tammy. Both mother and daughter agree – use white lights year-round in the bushes and trees! Make the view of the outdoors an extension of your indoor décor.

Colorful, whimsical, abundant, joyful, overflowing. Pick any one of those words or a combination of them and you’d have an apt description of Jodi Gordon’s garden. When you say “garden” in reference to the Ladue home Jodi shares with her husband Rick and their children, you need to interpret the word broadly.

If you were to guess where Jodi’s garden left off and her home began, you’d be hard-pressed for the answer. The mix of glowing colors in the hibiscus, petunias, verbena and impatiens that surround her swimming pool find their reflection in the yellow patio umbrellas trimmed with pink ruffles and aqua blue glass candlesticks. While lime-green polka dot chaise lounge covers and pink-and-green striped cushions provide seating and hospitality on the Gordons’ outdoor patio.

But the garden doesn’t end there. It moves indoors in color and spirit to a vibrant sunporch where an antique shaving stand, painted yellow, overflows with greenery, and the sink of an old potting bench is now a repository for a mix of petunias, angelonia and verbena. A table and chairs Jodi purchased for $5 at a garage sale (and painted a glowing turquoise) mimics the color of the water in the swimming pool outdoors. Antique blue-green seltzer bottles mix with boldly striped pastel upholstery and ornate lime-green wrought iron to create an eclectic blend of colors, textures and patterns worthy of a MacKenzie-Childs design award.

Even the small, stacked-stone waterfall and koi and goldfish pond nestled close to the house are meant to provide as much indoor ambience as outdoor beauty. Jodi worked with Todd Rundquist at West Winds Earthscaping and had a plan in mind. “I wanted something just off the kitchen that was small and easy to maintain, so I could hear the sound of the water from the kitchen, the sunporch and our bedroom,” she explained.

Todd also designed a two-level, rippling rock wall at the back of their property to provide definition and height to the relatively flat lot. “When we moved in four years ago, the yard was all grass and completely flat. We needed something to break up the space. I told Todd I didn’t want the wall to look new and I didn’t want it to look planned,” Jodi says of the undulating hardscape, now accented with perennials and shrubs, such as daylilies, coreopsis, perennial geranium and crape myrtle. A vine-covered gazebo was recycled from another part of the yard and moved to the pool area.

A freshly dressed outdoor daybed takes center stage as the perfect spot for summer relaxation in the colorful outdoor living area.	Color drenches the sunporch’s many whimsical, cozy vignettes.

While the pool existed when the Gordons moved in, it was 30 years old and in need of an overhaul.  Not only did they seek to repair the wear and tear of years gone by, they added a pool deck of swirling brickwork and curving walls interspersed with areas for flowers and shrubs. When the construction was done and it was time to plant, Jodi again knew exactly what she needed. “I love color in flowers,” she says emphatically. “I wanted to be able to look out at the pool even on a dreary day and have everything be bright and cheerful.”

To create this effect around the pool, Jodi relies strictly on annuals. “I find I can get better color than I do with perennials,” she says. “I do all the planting and gather flowers wherever I see them,” she explains. Petunias, marigolds, salvia, verbena and impatiens get mixed in with tropical hibiscus in every shade of the rainbow. “I love hibiscus because of their vibrant colors and because they bloom all summer in the heat,” says Jodi. While many gardeners would throw up their hands at shade-loving impatiens being planted alongside sun-loving petunias and tropical hibiscus, Jodi doesn’t flinch. “You can plant shade plants in the sun as long as you keep them wet,” she says. “The impatiens in the sun will get twice as big as those in the shade.” Jodi credits her mother, Judy Allen of Ladue, with her love of gardening. “As a child, I remember my mother always being out in the garden doing something.”

Colorful garden flip-flops were a spur-of-the-moment find at Ladue Market.	A waterfall is tailored to the garden space just outside the kitchen, exuding an ongoing resort-like feel.

While the Gordons’ outdoor living space is beautiful, it is also  relaxed and designed to make both family and friends feel at ease and welcome; even those of the four-legged variety. Handsome brick steps help their dogs descend comfortably through their own doggie door and into the garden. Whimsical flip-flop stepping stones, which Jodi discovered at Ladue Market, mark a path through the mulch to join the family.

Jodi also called on interior designer Joy Tribout to help her bring the indoors outside. “Jodi loves bright colors,” Joy notes. “I worked with her to select fabrics and furniture that would make the patio an extension of the sunporch she loves.”

Jodi agrees, “I wanted everything colorful and for the informal feeling of the sunporch to continue onto the pool deck and into our home, where you feel like you can put your feet up.”