“Fake it ‘til you take it”
Plan the perfect garden staycation this year. Pam Richardson has some pointers
One of the best holidays I’ve ever had was spent at home in Yorkshire. It was the mid 1980s, money was tight and I couldn’t afford the season ticket to work. So, I took a week’s leave instead. I confess, a ‘staycation’ wasn’t my first choice, but even so, I vowed to enjoy it as a proper holiday.
I got out the sun-lounger and beach umbrella and scheduled lazy breakfasts and evening cocktails on the ‘terrace’ (aka the communal paving that ran behind our modest row of miners’ houses). Of course it helped that the sun shone every day. To begin with I felt a bit silly, lolling around in swimwear while neighbours whizzed off to work… what they made of it I’ll never know, although I remember two very rotund roofers working opposite, making rude comments about MY physique! But as the week wore on I truly felt in holiday-mode.
Now, we have the same dilemma: how to make the garden feel like a holiday destination? Holidays are special because they’re a complete break from routine, but many ingredients of a good holiday location can easily be replicated: coffee and croissants or a Full English breakfast outdoors, on an inviting little bistro table shaded by a parasol; long lunches surrounded by white-washed walls and pelargoniums in pots; plus limitless ice cream, and cold drinks chilling nicely. All of these are fairly easy to achieve; it’s the holiday mindset that takes longer.
It helps to think of home as a fully-inclusive resort, one with the comfiest beds, no packing or unpacking, no airport security, no passport to find, no pounds to lose and no currency to buy!
Hang up some bunting for a real pub-garden/ village-fête vibe. Hoist strings of solar lights and turn the backyard into a taverna-cum-cocktail bar. Have picnics on the grass: I’m not surprised that sales of fake turf have soared this year, it’s so much softer on the tootsies than those tough Mediterranean lawns that spear your toes. (I know as a gardener I shouldn’t be saying this.)
Scarlet pelargoniums instantly transform a sunny spot into the Med, but if your garden is mainly in shade, try fuchsias and bedding begonias to add that foreign-villa feel. Fatsia japonica looks very much like a fig, and will grow in deep shade too.
Uninterrupted sea views may be non-existent, but a bare wall can be transformed with a couple of tester pots. Draw a circle, paint the top half pale blue and the bottom half a darker hue and bingo: you have your very own porthole sea view. But beware: once you’ve tried this simple paint trick, nothing is safe: you’ll have Greek-style azure-blue doors and French-style shutters before the end of the day. Painting the shed in beach-hut candy stripes is also therapeutic, especially when the sun goes in.
Plan your sunbathing/relaxing time and switch off. That’s where fake turf wins out (there’s no guilt about not mowing) and try not to weed, you’re on holiday! Who cares if you look fat/thin/silly in your swimmies?
To help take your mind off the everyday, download a language app and listen to the authentic sound of foreign voices. Or, get that book you’ve always meant to read, or a stack of magazines to flick through.
Then, when at last you’re finally free to jet off to sunnier climes again, you can fold up your beach brolly, pack up the bunting and paint over your ‘porthole’… but I bet you won’t! This will almost certainly be your cheapest holiday ever and just maybe, one of the best! ✿
Scarlet pelargoniums instantly transform a sunny spot into the Med