Hot! Hot! Hot!
From pools to outdoor kitchens, hot tubs and pizza ovens, Eleanor Steafel lists the things to make your heatwave sizzle
From garden office to cooldown buys – your heatwave essentials
And on the 14th week of lockdown, we were granted a heatwave. Temperatures are set to hit 34 degrees in some parts of the country this week, with the hottest June day for over 40 years due to be recorded on Thursday – meaning anyone blessed with a bit of green space is probably setting up camp in it for the foreseeable.
But if the past three months have taught us anything, it’s that for your garden to truly serve as a functioning outdoor office, kitchen, bar, leisure centre and even cinema, you need the right kit – and you probably don’t have it. Here, then, are some clever last-minute purchases that could help you move a little more seamlessly from the working day to lunchtime workouts, al fresco dinners and balmy movie nights.
Work
For those with no immediate requirement to return to the office, setting up a desk in your garden has never been so appealing. But squinting to see your screen and struggling to get a reasonable Wi-fi connection isn’t conducive to actually getting much work done.
First, enter the laptop hood: essentially a computer tent, often used by photographers who are accustomed to working outdoors whatever the weather. The icap (£89, amazon.co.uk) comes with all sorts of bells and whistles you’ll never need – “frost-resistant film” anyone? – but will do the all-important job of allowing you to actually see what you’re typing. Second, try a Wi-fi extender to increase your router’s range (visit telegraph.co.uk/ recommended for our pick of the best from £20 to £300).
If your garden furniture isn’t exactly ergonomic, an adjustable standing desk converter could be the answer. Costway’s offering (£88.95, amazon. co.uk) is more attractive than some of the chunkier varieties – it sits on top of your existing table, allowing you to stand, rather than spend the day hunched.
Finally, as a new study by university teams in Denmark and Greece suggests sunshine could diminish brain power, invest in a statement piece from the East London Parasol Company (eastlondonparasols.com). Or Vonhaus (vonhaus.com) has some colourful options with UV30+ protection from a more economical £36.99.
Al-fresco dining
I have always loved the idea of having a proper summer kitchen. Take inspiration from interiors blogger and stylist Lisa Dawson (lisadawsonstyling.com), who suggests thinking about how you cook inside and bringing that outside. “You need a prep area for food, so put a table next to your barbecue in order to have space to chop and arrange all the stuff you need,” she says. If you’re after a quick fix you could do worse than start with an outdoor trolley from Ikea (£39, ikea.com), but if you fancy a more permanent fixture, they also have outdoor cupboards (£79, Ikea.com) to store crockery and a few hardy ingredients like olive oil. Fill a nifty Kilner water dispenser (£17.95, wayfair.co.uk) with ice and mint and pop it in a shady spot on top, so you don’t even have to return to the kitchen to hydrate.
The real sign you have reached peak lockdown, however, is investing in a pizza oven. Most of us don’t have room for a full brick, wood-burning set up, and many of the more economical options are out of stock, nationwide, but La Hacienda’s BBQ Pizza Oven (£85.99, amazon.co.uk) can be popped on your existing gas or charcoal barbecue and be ready for use in about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, London-based chef Olia Hercules’s gorgeous book, Summer Kitchens – packed with beautiful recipes and photographs of makeshift kitchens that proliferate in veg gardens in her native Ukraine – is published this week (£26, bloomsbury. com) and full of DIY inspiration.
Pool time
You could, of course, keep it simple and fill up a paddling pool with the garden hose – Decathlon (decathlon. co.uk) have a few cheap and cheerful options in stock from around £19.99. But hot tub mania has hit Britain, with sales up 490 per cent on ebay and Instagram filled with smug couples sitting in their Lay-z spa inflatable (from £499, amazon.co.uk). If that sounds mad, in the middle of a heatwave, think again. Reduce the tub temperature to 34 C – about the same as the surface of your skin – and you’ll feel downright chilly.
A wood-burning number could be a longer-term investment, with an eye on the rest of the year. Forest Flame’s options start at an eye-watering £6,250 (forestflame.co.uk) but don’t require any chlorine and when you’re finished the cooled water can simply be drained onto the lawn. “It’s all natural,” Dawson says, “so it doesn’t matter if everything gets a good soak.”
Outdoor evenings
There is nothing better than these long, warm evenings where you find you’re still nattering outside at 10pm, without even needing a cardi. Dawson still advocates bringing the comfort of your living room outside, however. “The whole trick is to treat the garden as if it’s a room in your house,” she says.
Start with lighting – Cox & Cox have strings of vintage-style filament bulbs with a warm glow (£35, coxandcox.co. uk). Maisons du Monde have brightly coloured resin sofas that will work in any weather (£215.50, maisonsdumonde.com), while John Lewis still had a few cushioned garden sofas in stock, at time of writing (from £420, johnlewis.co.uk) for an extra injection of comfort.
But for true outdoor luxury, invest in a projector and set up your own home cinema. You can spend vast amounts, but something around the £300-mark, like the Epsom EB-S41 (£299.99, johnlewis.com) should work well as long as you leave it late enough to get dark. String up a sheet against a wall or fence, get the snacks and settle in for a late-night showing.