Taking the indoors outdoors for summer
As our gardens become an extension of our indoor living we have more choice than ever to make our outdoor areas look great.
A beautiful summer garden needs a choice of comfortable sitting areas in the most scenic spots for you to relax, soak up the sun, enjoy al fresco dining and entertain friends at different times of the day.
A timber deck, which can be accessed directly from the house by patio doors, is especially useful for extending the living space outdoors and also gives the illusion of a larger home but without shelling out a massive amount of money.
Be on trend this summer and invest in a comfy outdoor sofa for your chill-out space.
Buying one of these means that you can enjoy sitting outdoors even on one of this season’s cool or drizzly days – although it’s probably a good idea to erect an all-weather canopy or to give the patio a permanent living roof.
To complete the outdoor room look, ditch tatty lap fences and replace with decorative timber walls made with slats of wood to give the feeling of warmth.
Take the indoors out by investing in garden art and consider cleverly using mirrors to give hints of what lies beyond.
Reflecting beautiful areas of the garden also provides movement and interest. Or why not reflect images of the ever-changing sky?
Create a romantic ambience in the garden by adding soft, subtle lighting.
This can be anything from mounted spotlights, solar lanterns, tabletop candles, chandeliers hung from overhead beams wrapped with greenery and fragrant flowers to strings of ornamental lights and tiki torches in your pots and borders.
It’s hard to beat the draw of a living fire, so to make your patio more alluring after dark, invest in a fireplace, fire basket or metal fire bowl on a stand. Or you could build your own bonfire pit, which can either be sunk in the ground or contained within a brick wall, throwing out light as well as heat.