Inside story

Party in the garden

Jessica Doyle on how to get your garden party-ready

Your social diary isn’t like it used to be – but there are still ways to have fun outside. Jessica Doyle rounds up the best ideas

Never has the great outdoors been so integral to our homes and lifestyles than in lockdown. Whether it’s a rolling lawn, small city plot, sunny balcony or quiet spot in a park, outside space has become the closest thing possible to a social hub: somewhere to relax with family and, as restrictions lift, the safest place to cautiously get back into entertaining small numbers of friends.

Research recently released by John Lewis reveals a growing national obsession with both cooking and beautifying our outside spaces: according to its Britain Through the Lockdown report, 45 per cent of us have been eating differently over the past few months, including trying new cuisines and cooking techniques, and 78 per cent have been working on stocking up our home bars. When it comes to the garden, sales of outdoor lighting, fire pits and tiki bars have rocketed – up 109 per cent, 140 per cent and 87 per cent respectively.

While eating out as we knew it is unlikely to be a feature of life for some time to come, eating outside, and creating a restaurant experience in your own garden, is the way to style out summer 2020.

Dividing a garden into zones, with separate clusters of seating, is good for maximising your space but also for keeping people at a safe distance from one another. This could be a dining table near the house, a bistro set under a tree, and a lounge chair in a sunny spot. A gazebo helps to define a dining area within a garden, and creates an intimate ambience for twilight dinners or shade for daytime. Alternatively, try a garden screen – Screen With Envy’s Moroccanstyle ones come in black, grey, cream metal or Corten steel (screenwithenvy.co.uk).

Botanical and Moroccan-style screens are both decorative and great for dividing garden space into ‘rooms’