Christmas patio creation

When you’re decorating the house for Christmas, the garden often gets overlooked. Yet if you’re holding a party, having visitors to stay for a few days, or even just inviting the neighbours round for a quick sherry and mince pie, you’ll be looking out from a full-on festive living room onto a garden that’s, well, just plain dull and wintery. Complete the picture by extending your Christmassy theme out onto the patio.

Tidy away old hanging baskets and any other patio accessories that you don’t plan to use over Christmas; then give the paving a good wash-and-brush-up, and rearrange a few large pots of all-year-round evergreens, in groups, where they’re easily seen from indoors.

Add some colourful seasonal tubs or troughs to cheer the evergreens up, hang some bunches of mistletoe for the classic Christmas look, and you are almost there.

If you really want something spectacular to take pride of place on the patio, set up an outdoor Christmas tree. But, if you don’t want to distract attention from your masterpiece indoors then go for an alternative evergreen like a bay laurel pyramid tree, or a fair-sized potted topiary tree such as buxus sempervirens.

A potted holly makes a good centrepiece; if you can’t buy one with berries, choose any well-variegated form or opt for a more unusual blue holly, whose stunning colour is sure to attract attention.

Whatever you choose, you can always give it a festive touch by adding a few decorations to make it a bit different from its ‘everyday’ persona. A string of outdoor lights outlining the patio or draped artistically around groups of potted shrubs or your centrepiece tree adds instant ambience, and transforms the scene.