SCREENINGS INSPIRE YEAR-ROUND GARDEN
EmmA PATERSoN, 31, works in communications and lives in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, with her husband mark, 37, a police officer. She says: PEoPLE assume we put in our outdoor cinema during lockdown, but actually we were ahead of the curve, as we created ours in 2018 in the garden of our four-bedroom 1930s semi.
It’s come into its own during lockdown, and has been a real escape, especially for me as I’ve been stuck indoors working from home. We’ve devoured everything from Bond films to a three-night Hitchcock binge and are planning to invite friends over for a retro screening of the 1975 movie Jaws now we’re allowed.
our inspiration came after experiencing some fabulous outdoor movie screenings with friends in parks in South London. As we didn’t feel we were making enough use of the garden, which is my husband’s pride and joy, and as he’s a massive film enthusiast, it seemed crazy not to find a way to combine both interests. It wasn’t even expensive.
Having earmarked an area towards the bottom of the garden, we invested around £300 in a projector and a 90in outdoor screen. We bring the projector out when we want to watch a film, but the screen lives under a flap of the roof on the shed that acts as one wall of our backyard cinema. It’s super easy to set up and put away again.
Fortunately we’ve never been caught out by bad weather — we’d have to put the screen back under its cover, grab the projector and make a dash for the house if it ever suddenly rained. In front of the screen, there’s a lovely decking area with built-in seating that we made ourselves from old railway sleepers.
We also bought a firepit and even a quirky ‘now showing’ sign which displays the name of the movie we’re watching.
My husband added palms and ferns to the space to enhance the feeling of seclusion, and I draped the whole area with string lights so that our cinema feels cosy.
We use the cinema well into october, tucked up under blankets, and cannot wait to resurrect movie nights again. We’ve got a waiting list of friends who are desperate to come over and enjoy it with us.