Gardening


Planting plays a key role around your retreat. You will want to either use plants to provide a living screen for privacy, or, if you can see your new hideaway from the house, plants can blend it into the rest of an established the garden . Make your planting sensual and intimate. Scented plants greatly add to the enjoyment of being outside. A screen of sweet peas is quick and simple or train summerjasmine or honeysuckle around where you sit. Plant some chamomile or corsican mint in the ground to release their scent when you put your feet on them too. Plants like grasses and bamboos, which rustle in the wind, add another dimension.


With the long summer holidays fast approaching, why not create a retreat for your kids too? They'll love a place where they can go and be on their own, giving you both peace and quiet. A simple shed can be dressed up to be pink and pretty with flowering pots outside and fluffy cushions inside. Alternatively, paint it in camouflage colours, let the grass grow long, and send them off on safari!


Having a retreat in the garden is ideal when you only have half an hour to yourself, it is close to hand, and no travelling is required to get there. In the time it takes a cup of tea to cool to drinking temperature, you can be settled down and half way through the next chapter of your favourite book. So, to spend the Summer miles away, without being miles away, make yourself a place to dream.


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