Ronel Jordaan’s handmade felt cushions are year-round, garden set dressing. Aping giant river-worn rocks, each one is a whole piece of fabric, with no stitches, and is waterproofed with sap from her native South African lacquer tree (£239 to £1,007).
The sweet-smelling indoor/outdoor cushions from Rushmatters (£186 to £354) are made using an ancient British craft of weaving them from bulrushes harvested from the rivers Great Ouse, Nene and Ivel. Throw them onto a bench or a wall, then brush them down when the party’s over.
Tables and chairs are other staples for a host and it pays to work them just as hard. The Australian concept of casual dining furniture debuts in this country with Kettler’s plump-cushioned faux rattan sofas, armchairs and stools, combined with a slightly lower than usual faux-wood dining table.
You don’t have to swap seats after the aperitif and it works as well in the conservatory as on the terrace (though you can leave the rattan out all winter), from £1,599 a set.
Ikea’s white PS 2014 outdoor table and bench are versatile in a different way. Sleek and contemporary with tubular legs, they can be folded up and packed away. You can store them until the next big knees-up, maybe Christmas lunch, as nothing about them screams garden furniture (£90 and £50). Habitat’s Macadam go-anywhere folding metal chairs, £8 in the sale until July 27, are similarly storable and add a splash of colour.
Adaptability may also mean fusing two different bits of kit. Liberty Games has an all-weather pool table you can also use for dining, with an optional lid and benches (£1,629).
Fun for all the family: Liberty Games's pool table
Barbecues
Cole Henley’s steel and iroko dining tables (from £2,519) have a gas barbecue in the middle. Guests can cook for themselves, or there are wooden covers to hide the grills if the host wants to go cordon bleu. No need for a heater, the central barbecue generates a cosy glow.
Hot stuff: Cole Henley barbecue table
Some outdoor cooking kit is better at keeping you warm than others. It’s worth seeking out Girse Design’s Duo Exclusiv outdoor fireplaces. The vermiculite stone lining means that the fire chamber belts the heat back out. With a Puffing Billy chimney, they’re stainless steel so can stay out through the months when you really appreciate a roaring fire. There are three sizes (from £2,450), 12 cooking accessories, and they come on wheels.
Firepits UK recommends its biggest 120cm firepit as a party animal up to any tough job. It is made from a single piece of steel in its Welsh workshops (£495, plus £110 for a cooking plate and rack).
Perfect for chilly evenings: a firepit
Landmann does not specifically recommend its brazier-shaped log burner barbecue (£49.99) for prunings disposal, but then again, it does not say you should not do so.
None of these is easily portable for beach barbies, unlike the groovy new Australian LotusGrill (from about £135 or £225). This burns charcoal smokelessly, won’t spill a single scorching lump if it tips over, and is cool to the touch so it can sit on the table or outdoor kitchen worktop. Oh, and it’s ready to cook in three minutes. Perfect for families.
Outdoor kitchens
Outdoor kitchens can feel plutocratic, but think laterally and it doesn’t need to be a big investment; the point is to let the chef join the party. Vango’s camping Como kitchen (£95) folds away to nothing in a bag and features black work surfaces, storage and cooking windshield (black is the new green according to style gurus at
Gardenista). Functional gardening equipment can be adaptable too. The Marwood potting table (£215) from Arbor UK, a smart beech cupboard with wheels and a grey worktop, could easily moonlight as a kitchen or Pimm’s bar. Fill one of the new eight-litre glass Kilner drinks dispensers (£29.99) with the demon brew, or with a hot toddy.
Estonia doesn’t have much of a profile in the designer furniture market but Ulaelu is giving snooty Continentals a run for their money.
Its minimal modular kitchen consists of a basic frame (£1,490), a black, powder-coated, aluminium rectangle with a dark, thermo-treated ash base, on which you mix and match component top sections. You can opt for more ash, a drainer, a sink with a smount to turn your garden hose into a tap, and a charcoal grill (from £192 to £890). Though stormproof, it could convert into a chic console table indoors over winter.
Weather protection
Climate change is likely to bring wetter weather, so protection from the rain has a head start on justifying its purchase. The Coleman Event Shelter Deluxe is a bikini-skimpy lid of UPF 50 fabric. Break out the optional weatherproof walls and doors and it could be a dome-tented summer festival dormitory too. There’s no ground sheet, so invest in a decadent but practical indoor/outdoor carpet.
Fun: the Coleman Event Shelter
Namada from Rockett St George (4) is fit for a pasha, patterned like trendy-again encaustic tiles (from £300).
Homely: Namada
Barbed stocks Pappelina’s jolly stripes and stars (from £30). You can hose the polypropylene down and it won’t get mouldy. Throw one down in Unopiù’s Aralia greenhouse to transform it into a contemporary garden room. The Italians are brilliant at matching kit, even the mid-market brands. The 3.78 sq m metal frame and pointed skylight are powder-coated in smart graphite and so is the movable greenhouse staging, which you can take outside for al fresco dinners or use as a sideboard (£10,300).
Thing of beauty: Aralia's greenhouse
Crown Pavilions’ constructions are pricey. In return, they do make the weather irrelevant. The latest addition is a garden cinema room of lustrous, Western red cedar, good for the surround-sound acoustics apparently. It costs about £66,000.
Warmth and lighting
Other garden options include a hot tub. A survey by Ocean Finance, a loans company, found that one fifth of us want a hot tub. How much easier to justify if, like the £4,875 Dutchtub Original, you can sling it on the roof rack for bubbly away days, as well as move it round the garden. Weltevree’s groovy pink, orange, blue or white fibreglass bowls are wood-fired and only 75kg. Take a wok with you to cook on the coil while it’s heating the water.
Funky: the Big Fire hot tub
All it needs is party lights such as the Dett outdoor cube ground lights (£134.40). Like the Paloma, they generate a chilly, other-worldly light. For a flattering glow you need flames. The heat from bioethanol fireplaces dissipates too quickly outside to be effective, but they are atmospheric. If you go for one like Stix (£1,999), a bonfire of silver tubes from EcoSmart Fire, you can use it indoors too.
Otherwise, head to the pound shop for a bumper bag of tea lights. The zinc-coated brass jewel lanterns (£40 a pair) from the Indian Garden Company stay shiny even when out all year round. More obviously adaptable are Annie Haigh’s rusty metal tea light holders (£20). The 158cm (5ft) stalks double as plant supports and bird feeders.
Atmospheric: the Indian Garden Company jewel lanterns
Muntons has designed a cloche for the kitchen garden at Hampton Court, where they have been fitted out as electric lights. You can buy them as protection for candles and tender plants (£540).
Where to buy
(source link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningequipment/10973437/Great-outdoor-furniture-whatever-the-weather.html)
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