Just tidy the garden: How Dermot Bannon and Suzie McAdam do summer

From the right lighting to what to serve for dinner, Dermot Bannon and Suzie McAdam share their top tips for entertaining during the warmer months with Edel Coffey

Sat, 23 Jul, 2022 - 10:00

Edel Coffey

Over the last few years, we’ve become a nation adept at staycations and al fresco living. Give us a patch of grass, a sheltered deck or even a front stoop and we’ll make the most of it, especially if the sun comes out.

Two people who definitely know how to get the most out of summers at home are architect and star of Room To Improve, Dermot Bannon and interior designer and former Home Of The Year judge, Suzie McAdam.

For many of us, summer is all about recreating our childhoods. Long lazy days in the garden or endless days on the beach eating sandy sandwiches and 99 ice-cream cones. For Dermot, who grew up in Malahide, summers were spent visiting family in Wexford and Waterford.

“My mum is a school teacher so she got long summer holidays and we were the only family where summer was all about going back to Waterford and Wexford to visit granny’s farm outside New Ross, and then up to my dad’s in Dungarvan. Staying over with cousins, sleeping on floors, it was a brilliant time.

Suzie McAdam and Dermot Bannon. Picture: Moya Nolan

"Our big treats were days out to the beach, and playing on the hay on the farm. My dad slagged us when we were big grumpy teenagers, because in Malahide lots of people worked for Aer Lingus and it used to enrage us. Now I’d give anything for a day down to Booley Bay. We always went down to family so we were never visitors, we weren’t tourists, we belonged there. It was a lovely childhood.”

Suzie McAdams says her childhood holidays were “a very mixed bag”.

“My parents are from Louth so we spent a lot of time in Carlingford sailing and I loved being out on the water, learning to sail in a dinghy and at the sailing club. We spent chunks of my childhood there. My dad worked in America so we also spent a lot of time over there and my memory is of it being insanely hot, but it was really fun as well.

That New England world influenced me a little bit in design because we’ve really moved to appreciate our outdoor areas and I experienced that there as a kid.

Like Suzie, Dermot’s dad’s work also took him abroad for a stint in his childhood.

“I spent two years living in Cairo in Egypt. My dad was a horticulturist and they were irrigating the desert, so we went over on a project.

“I was really struck by the poverty but as a metropolis and a city, it was huge, jam-packed with people, and scary too. Now when I think back it definitely opened my eyes to how people lived, it was my first experience of street life.”

Nowadays summer holidays for Suzie are a little different.

“I ended up having two lockdown babies so I don’t get out as much now. I’m based in Sandycove in Dublin and because I grew up in Limerick, it was such a big deal to go to the beach.

“And now my two boys get to go every day. I love it in the spring or even when the days are not that warm, just being down there and playing in the sand. I love the simplicity of that quality time. There’s something fundamental about having your feet in the sand, it’s calming. I work long hours and it’s an intense business so I love that simplicity.”

Simplicity is something both Dermot and Suzie espouse as central to getting the most out of your home and garden in the summertime.

“When I’m cooking on the barbecue it’s always simple stuff," Dermot says.

"I have a charcoal barbecue and I just do chicken, fish, baked potatoes, and burgers — easy food that the kids love and it’s no pressure. It has to be simple, it’s about getting out there, lighting the fire, quick and easy.

“I love cooking inside and doing the slow roast but there are other things to be doing in summer.”

Suzie says adding some decorative touches to your outdoor table elevates the occasion.

“If we’re having people over, I have a small wrought-iron table in the back garden and it’s fun to play with tablecloths and with some nice salad bowls to make an outdoor table feel like an occasion, a bit more special.

“It elevates a get-together. It doesn’t have to be formal or extravagant, just some cut flowers in an ordinary juice glass can be fun.”

Adding lights to the garden can give your home a twinkling summer festival feel.

“You can introduce subtle lighting,” says Dermot, “under trees or shrubs, lights in the patio area or barbecue area so you can emphasise things.”

When it comes to the home, getting a nice link out to the garden is important, says Dermot.

“It doesn’t need to be structural. Just tidy up the garden. I’m not a believer in huge patios and outdoor kitchens. Summer for me is about my childhood.

“There was a field at the back of my granny’s house with chickens in it and really long grass and when it all got too much for me with siblings I’d pat down the long grass and I’d lie there for an hour or so, lying under the trees in the garden.

“I’d much rather sit with a book under a tree than on a sterile patio. I like outdoor space a little wilder. If you are in a garden it’s not an extension of your living room. Think of how we behave when we go to a park. We don’t go to a park and look for a massive patio to sit down on.

People get obsessed with the right furniture and pressure to have the right look, but a blanket thrown onto the grass… that’s pure magic for me.

In rural Ireland, we tend to have driveways all the way around the back of the house and it puts your house on an island.

“Don’t be afraid of having trees or shrubs or bushes up against windows. I went to see the ‘Butterfly House’ in Leitrim and they had no patio at all, they just let the grass grow right up to the door and cut a square out of that for the ‘patio’. I left a section out of our patio for ferns. It’s lovely to have nature right up to the windows.”

Both think it’s better to take a relaxed approach to garden furniture.

“People think they need big tables or corner chairs, but the underrated picnic rug is amazing,” says Suzie.

“And deck chairs are foldable and easily storable so you can take them anywhere with you. I love pieces that are movable, especially in a smaller garden you can move with the sun.

"Don’t get hung up on buying dedicated outdoor cushions or rugs either. An old cushion from a chair or a bed inside is just as good. Just bring it outside and reuse it.”

Dermot agrees.

“The point is the get outside and enjoy your home. Try to keep an area for nature. Decks don’t have to be massive.

“Don’t take too much nature out of your garden. It’s one of my pet hates. It’s nice to escape.”