How often do we use the garden in winter? Well, the honest answer is probably not enough! Instead of “putting the garden to bed” for the winter, treat the outdoors as an alternative ‘chill-out’ place. All you need is the correct equipment to help keep everyone cosy and warm in your outdoor space. Making your garden inviting and interesting will encourage you to use it more often.
Concentrate on making just one area more intimate. Create an area, heating it with a patio heater, chiminea or a fire-pit. The last two not only create great focal points, but you can even get to toast marshmallows! Wrap a blanket around you and huddle up. Go stargazing in your own back garden, it’s truly amazing what you can see on a clear crisp night. Consider installing a pergola over the same area to increase the cosiness.
Install lighting or use candles to add ambience.
Heart-warming food such as stews can be served in mugs. Creamy hot chocolate is fabulous, as is glühwein. Invest in an outdoor pizza oven - children will love making their own, with the bonus of being outside in the fresh air. The oven is also another source of heat!
If budgets permit, consider a gazebo, a summerhouse or an outdoor room and benefit from being both indoors and outdoors at the same time. Any of these can be made warm and inviting with the right furnishings.
Create winter interest and entertainment by attracting wildlife and birds to your garden. Sit outside, close to a feeder, and simply enjoy watching the birds going backwards and forwards. As word goes around in “bird land”, you’ll soon encourage varieties you’ve previously never seen.
Plant winter flowering plants close to where you sit, that way you can appreciate their beautiful scent. Plants such as Sarcoccoca (winter box), Daphne, Winter Honeysuckle (lonicera Fragrantissima or lonicera x Purpuseii `Winter Beauty’) and Viburnum Bodnantense. Purchase containers pre-planted with bulbs and annuals to give instant colour in your cosy area.
Enjoy your garden all year round!
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