Fire's allure sparks trend

May 22, 4715 |

Time was, if you wanted a campfire in your backyard, you found a spot out by the garden where the grass wasn’t doing too well, scouted up some cinderblocks, built them up a couple feet high and topped them off with salvaged rebar, so you had somewhere to rest your marshmallow-roasting sticks.

These days, you can drop anywhere from a few hundred to a cool 40 grand on what is called a “fire pit.”

What you get for that money is the latest in trendy outdoor entertaining, says Landry Linn, a landscape designer with Bruce Ewing Landscape Design in Fort Wayne. Fire pits are today’s ultimate patio or lakeside accessory, and their popularity is due to people swapping vacations for “staycations,” Linn says.

“People aren’t taking vacations,” he says. “It’s a matter of do you want to spend $4,000 or $5,000 on a family vacation just for a week or put it into a family living area you’ll use all the time?”

Upper-end fire pits, Linn says, are usually part of a full patio project and done at the same time the patio is installed.

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