Grow your own fun with a garden soirée
Most gardens will need a little prepping for aesthetics and safety, and with a few cheap tricks and sharing resources, it’s just add food, friends and stir.
First of all, cut the grass as tightly as possible, and take the time to remove the shaggy edges around borders. Set the mower blades as low as possible and try a couple of passes for a golfing green finish.
A cylinder mower is perfect for a squeaky, tight cut — so chat up that neighbour with the super mower. Mix some compost and sand with a shake of lawn seed to fill in any dodgy holes. If you’re lucky, it will even spring up green in just a few days. Walk around and notice any dangerous changes in terrain, say from a paving area to a lawn. Use your lawn fix mixture to level this off if possible.
Lop back the worst of the shrubs, ensuring that at eye and ankle height they are unlikely to topple an unsteady toddler or blind a happy adult with a couple of margueritas on board.
Clear away outdoor play things and hideous domestic detritus such as wheelie bins and clean down any areas in need of attention with a power-hose if you have one, or can borrow one — the results can be impressive.
If the place still looks like a landscape from a post-apocalyptic movie, finish up your horticultural efforts with a trip to the local garden centre for some flowers already in bloom.
Buying perennials you can have the reward of flowers next year too. Poke your newcomers into containers, window-boxes, borders, anywhere that needs a lift and take the compliments with a cunning shrug. At the last moment, to cheer up still dreary areas, lob some attractive cuttings from shrubs in their full glory, and shove them into water filled tins, buckets and jars for patio displays and table arrangements.
For daytime parties, wash the windows and wipe off the windowsills — you will be judged.
Standing around all night balancing a drink in one hand white flailing for food with the other is exhausting. No-one expects a hardwood chair each at a large, casual gathering, but do your best to assign some sort of seating for everyone.
Where you’re short of chairs, blankets thrown over areas of the lawn will prove a magnet for younger, limber guests. Just keep them out of the main traffic areas where they could prove a dramatic tripping hazard over bodies and discarded glasses and plates.
For something more formal, a stable chair and at least 50cm of table is going to be needed for every guest to sit down and eat their courses.
A large pasting table is an ideal additional surface for staging food and drink buffet style. Disguise your humble servant in a couple of large table-cloths or use lengths of coloured paper.
Don’t get over excited about themes or schemes, just use a couple of colours in your napkins, flowers, and where possible the flatware or paper-ware to add some coherence, easily done with some cheap, cheerful, €2 shop buys.
Jam jars, or a series of tin cans, cleaned of their labels set along the table are perfect for holding a few flowers and greenery.
If you have the time, you can paint them up or wrap each in fabric or a small remnant of wallpaper. Think about where guests will flow up to, serve themselves and drift from the table, when setting up.
The subject of weather for any outdoor event in Ireland can only be approached with guffaws of laughter. Plan for the usual meteorological disaster and hope for better.
Where will you all run if it does rain or the wind picks up? If the only option is an expanse of cream carpet through a French door, what about setting up a gazebo? You may find a neighbour or family member has one tucked in the back of the garage forgotten and wasted. Gazebos also provide blessed shade on particularly sunny days — no really, they do.
If you don’t have tenting, a loaner or funds, just set up a couple of parasols as sun shade, and be prepared for a thundering herd entering the house if things go pear shaped.
A large water sopping hydrophilic rug or runner is a great investment just inside the back door.
Ensure the rooms immediately on view and accessible are tidy and clean and shorn of anything truly fragile and/or precious. Human beings are shamelessly nosey.
Even with the spill of light from the house illuminating most of the garden it’s tempting to scatter every surface with candles and votives.
Enclosed, stable lanterns are the safest option as even tea lights can becomes very hot if plucked up in tiny fingers. Outdoor Christmas lights you already have (ditch the ladder-climbing Santa) can be wound through trees, draped over fences, used to frame doors and wound around pillars. Plug them through an RCD for safety sake.
If you know that your party or BBQ gathering is going to be noisy, warn the neighbours or invite them along. Giving them an estimated finishing time however late is always appreciated, but you really should stick to it.
Limit spending to things you would use again indoors — and then enjoy.
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