Easy al fresco entertaining

Take the indoors outside, and turn your green space into a luxurious dining room.

• Lay a table outside, spread with real crockery, sparkling cutlery and jugs or jam jars of freshly cut flowers for a magical effect. Mismatched chairs and a flowery cushion on each seat add to the relaxed look, and make your guests feel comfy and cared for.
• Fill the garden with feel-good scents. Cut the lawn before guests arrive. There’s nothing that will uplift people like the smell of freshly-mown grass. Decorate trellises and trees with a string of outdoor flower lights
• Serve big, hearty salads or summery fruity punch in generously sized plastic salad bowls. Wash the whole lot with New Fairy Ultra Caps, which prevent red stains better than any other diswashing detergent. Brilliant at keeping clear plastics unstained, Fairy is the only dishwashing product recommended by Tupperware.
• Spread out rugs for guest to chill out on after their meal. And pass round fresh mint tea.

• Make little bundles of Parma ham, dried figs and soft goat’s cheese, recommended by Nigella for a small summery mouthful before the main course starts.
• Hot summer days are the best time to enjoy food at room temperature, when flavours are at their very best. Serve up a beautiful roasted salmon and new potatoes dressed in olive oil, fresh herbs and lemon.
• Follow with melon slices drizzled with rose syrup, for a light summery pudding that won’t pile on pounds.
• Bring out a single cheese on a bed of giant green fig leaves or bamboo mat adorned with grapes, with crackers and oatmeal biscuits.

• Snacks don’t have to be salty. Pile an old-fashioned cake stand high with dessert canapés or take round a tray of shot glasses filled with ready-made fruit smoothies.
• Lose the soggy paper plates and serve food on bamboo platters, or prettily printed plastics.
• Make cooling fruit jellies in pretty plastic cups. Put a tablespoon of summer fruits in each cup, make up the jelly, pour over and leave to set. Garnish each cup with a sprig of fresh mint.
• Try a posh a strawberry tea. Just add summery strawberries to scones and cream. And mini pavlovas made with meringue, cream and summer fruits.

• If you’re cooking a romantic dinner a deux, and don’t have much space to fire up a big barbeque, improvise with a flowerpot barbeque. Grill kebabs on a metal grill set over glowing charcoal, arranged on broken bricks inside a roomy earthenware flowerpot about 45cm across.