Add a little luxe outside this summer
If the garden is your only destination for now, why not go all out, says Eleanor Steafel
If there has been one saving grace over lockdown, it has surely been the weather. Our gardens and balconies have become indispensable amid the non-stop sunshine. Apart from being essential spaces for cultivating a pandemic tan, our gardens have effectively provided us with a whole extra room in which to exist while we have been confined to our homes.
This weekend will be the first in months that we can have a social gathering in the garden rather than navigating the hordes in the park. But beyond small affairs, outdoor spaces are now being elevated for socially distant gatherings of a larger kind: from weddings to festivals, the space beyond your French doors may take on a different purpose entirely during this “new normal” summer.
Untangled Events is offering anyone with a bit of space the opportunity to recreate cancelled trips, anniversary celebrations et al in their garden, providing customers with a full “pandemic pop-up” kit – complete with bell tents, food trucks and coffee carts. It’s possibly a little elaborate while we can only see six people at a time, but as soon as those restrictions are lifted, your very own at-home Glastonbury is go.
With distanced socialising moving from parks to gardens, get ahead of the summer rush and start sprucing up your outdoor space (yes, even if the temperature is dipping for a few days). Bid adieu to your dusty furniture, and try these five quick fixes:
Create an ‘outdoor room’
If you’re settling in for a proper catch-up with friends, why not try to recreate the kind of stylish comfort you would be able to provide if you were allowed to host people in your living room. Isabelle Palmer, founder of The Balcony Gardener, which installs curated containers, living walls and house plant displays, says rugs, beanbags and comfortable but beautiful chairs are the key to creating a chic “outdoor room”.
“Outdoor rugs are really great for transforming the floor and giving it that great outdoor room feel, as is really lovely furniture,” she says. “And garden-friendly cushions and rugs can really make an outdoor seating area.”
Palmer suggests investing in something like the modernist lounge chair from Ferm Living (fermliving. com), a Danish occasional chair from Anthropologie (anthropologie.com) for that elegant indoor/outdoor look, and a colourful rug from Maisons du Monde (maisonsdumonde.com).
Weatherproof chic
A decorative parasol is a great, low-effort way to inject some colour and style into your garden set-up. The East London Parasol Company creates vibrant parasols with tassels and carvings that make them a real focal point for a simple outdoor space. Made from hand-block-printed cottons from Jaipur and hand-painted fabrics from Bali, they could be just the thing to liven up your patio. “They’re also perfect for social distancing because they are all two to three metres in diameter,” jokes founder Lucy Ferguson. Parasols are, she says, good for “unifying people underneath them”, as they provide a kind of lid for conversations. “The most unappealing, uninspiring space can be livened up with a parasol. It adds an extra level. We’re so grateful to see each other now, we’ve been waiting for this day.
We may as well celebrate it and put something beautiful up in the garden.”
A spanner in the works, of course, is the small matter of the weather being on the turn. But a bit of rain shouldn’t stop us inviting the friends and family we’ve longed to see. We are British after all. A shade sail could be the solution, such as those from British company Clara Shade Sails (clarashadesails.co.uk).
Dining at a distance
The rules had been slightly shaky on whether or not it was acceptable to share food with friends, but last week the Prime Minister announced that barbecues were now back on the cards. Why not create an outdoor kitchen to ensure your guests don’t have to go inside if they want to top up their drink. Ikea’s new Kolbjörn range of stone-coloured weatherproof cupboards and shelves can be used indoors or out, and could be perfect for storing outdoor cooking equipment (you could also use them to squirrel away any gardening kit that you could do without being on show).
If your barbecue set-up needs an upgrade, you could splash out on a
Splash out on hurricane lanterns for that beachy, festival feel