Episode 14 - Gardens

Following an absolute scorcher of a week in Ireland, Kate and Jenny are talking about gardens, and how a planned out well garden can be as good as having another room in your home. Kate and Jenny discuss everything from furniture and outdoor kitchens to plants and lighting, making your gardens such a haven you'll never want to go back indoors!

Transcript

Episode 14 - Gardens

​[00:00:00] 

Jen: You are listening to rip it up the renovations podcast. hi, I'm Kate. I run the Instagram page, @victorianrathmines. And I'm Jenny. I run the Instagram account, @workerscottage.

Kate: This podcast is all about renovation and interiors from the renovator's perspective. We've been through it a few times between us and it hasn't scared us off. In fact 

Jen: we loved it so if you are planning to do up your own home you can expect to hear lots of advice from our own experience along with plenty of tips and inspiration. ​

after an absolute scorcher of a week last week, we're talking about gardens and how planned out well, a garden can be as good as having another room in your home. We'll discuss everything from furniture and outdoor kitchens to plants and lighting, making your gardens such a haven you'll never want to go back indoors. 

Jenny: Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Kate. Hi, Jen. How's it going? Good. You have a lovely tan. Oh, well, a [00:01:00] nice long week of sun in the garden. God, it's unreal, isn't it? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Every time we get this weather and then it goes away, I'm devastated. Like as soon as the sun comes out. I'm like, I'm moving to a 

Kate: sunny, I'm moving to a sunny climate.

I have to move to a sunny 

Jenny: climate. What are we doing here? Like I, I always, I'm like, this is it. Ireland has evolved into a sunny country with blue skies. And sunshine every day, and this is how it's going to be forever, and then it goes away and I'm like, 

Kate: what? And the style. I always think people look class.

I'm happy! Yeah! And just like, bopping around, flowy dresses, , ah, it's such a, just mood 

Jenny: booster. It's a dream. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Jenny: So I've been in my garden for the whole of last week. Pretty much. 

Kate: I haven't left it, except to sleep. So nice. I've cooked there, eaten there, kids have been in the Zen pit at like, half seven in the morning, wrecking my neighbours head.

Jenny: So, perfect timing for the garden episode cause we have very different gardens. 

Kate: We have very different gardens, yeah, but Could you go and mine a garden? Courtyard, maybe. 

Jenny: Courtyard, yeah. 

Kate: Mine, my last garden [00:02:00] was kind of closer to a courtyard size, and same in the one I had in Galway so we've had a lot of similarities through all our gardens, I think.

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: My net, my current one is very different. My last two are similar to yours, I think. 

Jenny: So where do we start? We both have dogs and so there's a lot of thinking around when you're planning out your garden what do you put on the ground is probably first and foremost. Why you 

Kate: put on the ground, yeah it's the biggest area possibly but I also think we always harp on about this how do you use the space?

How do you use the space? Is it for entertaining? Is it your kids kicking a ball? Is it your dog you know spending a bit of time out there during the day? So you have to kind of consider that. And I think planting, whatever the ground covering is, is not going to be suitable for kind of all aspects. So you have to consider that.

And this is somewhere we do have something in common where you have artificial grass in your courtyard. Yeah. I had it in my previous garden as well. And I 

Jenny: [00:03:00] love it. And I, I, I didn't have the option to go for real grass because where would I put a lawn mower? It just wouldn't work. It's tiny. Like my, for listeners, my garden is about two meters by two meters.

So that's it. So there was no option for real grass. So it was something else, but I really liked the green. And again, cause I have a dog, artificial grass just made sense. Made sense. 

Kate: Yeah, we were the same in our last house. It was quite small. It was east facing, high walls. Like the dog we had, the size of the dog we had, half.

Pee stains we just burn to normal grass. 

Jenny: This is the thing, if you're, have a dog or you're planning to get a dog and you're thinking about grass. Yeah. When they pee on the grass, it basically just, yeah, burns the grass, turns it yellow, kills it. Yeah. And so then you have this patchy The horrible garden.

Kate: Burnt grass. Burnt grass garden. And like if you have a huge space, fine, your dog is going to spread that pee out somewhere. But if you have a small space like we both had or have, like, you can't. Like it's impossible. 

Jenny: Yeah. Some people are really, like they're really well trained dogs and they have this kind of corner section off of the garden with maybe a chip or [00:04:00] something.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know the space. The, the other thing I like, I love the artificial grass because it gives the greenery that you like and it's so good these days. Yeah. Like it's really, really realistic. You know, it's got little like tiny blades of yellow and brown through it and it doesn't look kind of fake and plasticky.

I think it looks really, really good. Yeah, they've 

Kate: definitely come on a lot. I think in recent years. They're not like the fake ASEE carpet looking grass. Yeah. It used to be. It does look much more realistic I think. And then when you compare it to real grass, which I have in my garden now, because the garden is a bit bigger, so we could probably afford to, you know, have real grass in terms of like the dog peeing on it, whatever, and spreading it out.

But it's a lot of work having a green lawn that you want to look nice. Oh yeah, but lawn mowing, feeding it, like it doesn't just stay green and lush like by itself. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: So there's a lot of maintenance. So I think that's something people should consider. And if you can't put real grass in, maybe you balance it with planting in the borders and elsewhere and beds and pots and whatever.

Jenny: That's the key. That's what I did when I first moved in here. [00:05:00] So shout out to Johnny Gannon an associates friend of mine, and he has a landscape business. He's phenomenal. And he put in a vertical wall for me that was, it's all these felt pockets that are nailed to the wall and they were planted with lots of different ferns and ivy and all sorts of stuff.

And that was where the actual greenery came from. Which I adored but I do not have green fingers and I was just not able to keep it alive. I killed everything. 

Kate: It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. 

Jenny: You know, He made it as minimal work as possible, but I still killed everything. Yeah. I just don't have green fingers, and I, my poor grandmother, like, she's, if she, she'd be so devastated to learn that this is how I turned out as an adult.

She was the best gardener in the world. Like, she was incredible. But I just don't have it. 

Kate: I wouldn't say I have it either. I'm kind of leaning on my husband here. Like we both do a bit in the garden, but he's definitely the Peter and Barney of our relationship, out with the scissors and the edging tool.

Oh yeah. Like every day he's doing something on that garden without, yeah. Especially in the summer months. [00:06:00] So good for you, isn't it? Like it's really, it is nice. Yeah, it is nice, but it's a lot, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of maintenance. But in saying that having the garden we have now. it's the reason we moved house pretty much to get a south facing garden and I just love sitting in it being surrounded by green and being surrounded by the real grass and lots of planting it's a dream for me so for me it's worth it now in the garden I have.

Jenny: Yeah and that's something obviously you think about when you're buying your house like when people say What direction is your house facing? They mean are you lucky enough to get a south facing or maybe a west facing garden? Yeah, because you want that evening sunlight and you want it as long as possible for those rare days 

Kate: Well this whole week.

Yeah, so yeah, so that's what I would think on kind of general ground coverings, or real grass versus artificial grass? 

Jenny: The one thing I've seen a lot recently about real grass, and I saw this actually on a neighbour's house I was out walking very earlier, and I've heard a lot about it you know, I know Dear MacGavin goes on about it, and a few others, is around not cutting your grass all the time.

Oh, yeah. And you see it, [00:07:00] for example, on roundabouts in Ireland, or in like landscaped, you know, greens and stuff like that, where it's become popular, I would say, to cut just one trim around the edge of it so that it looks neat, but then to leave the rest of it uncut because actually cut grass is not so good.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Kate: It's much better for biodiversity. Yeah. Kind of, you know, different types of flowering plants or when the grass goes to seed and stuff like that. And we're actually in May, which is It's technically no momey, you're meant to mow your grass 

Jenny: unless, yeah, 

Kate: so it's definitely more kind of bee friendly to leave your kind of grass go long and let the daisies and dandelions grow and all that.

I tell that to my husband. I would say if there's a dandelion pops up in our grass, it'll be gone really quick. But in saying that we've balanced it out by like all the planting in the beds around are really pollinator friendly plants. Like our, our garden is full of pollinators. Of bees and butterflies.

Oh, that's so nice. All the time, isn't it? It's magic. Like all the lavender stuff like that that we've planted are all like, they all attract bees and butterflies and 

Jenny: [00:08:00] whatever 

Kate: else. 

Jenny: So probably all of this is to say that think about how you use your space and then also be very honest about the amount of upkeep that you're willing to do in a garden.

'cause any bit of planting at all is gonna take work, right? Yeah. There's very, very few plants out there that take nothing. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Jenny: Grass takes work. Everything takes work. So be very realistic with yourself, I think about what. 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And also, one thing for artificial grass, it is kind of lower maintenance.

But, in our last house where we had it, and we have a big dog, it smelt like pee during the summer. Oh, did it? Yeah. When it would get very, like, dry and warm for, say, a week at a time, like this week we had to go down and hose it down and clean it with artificial grass cleaner. 

Jenny: Yeah, I do hose mine down quite a bit actually, 

Kate: yeah.

So, like, I mean, Less so with a dog the size of Harry, but a dog the size of Amber who's drinking a liter or two of water a day, there's a lot of pee. She pees a lot. And like, you really have to kind of stay on top of it. So that is technically a bit of maintenance that you wouldn't expect. So it's just something to keep in mind, especially if you've like, if you have tomcats as well, they can be [00:09:00] quite smelly, you know?

So yeah, there is a tiny bit of maintenance. I 

Jenny: have that on my, so I put artificial grass on the roof of my kitchen extension. And so I can climb out of my bedroom window and sit out there if I want to and and enjoy it. But I actually have loads of cats in the neighborhood that roam around the place when they use it.

They pee on it all the time. Yeah, 

Kate: they love it. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny actually our extension in our last house to kind of balance the fake grass that we had on the ground level on the extension roof. We did a sedum roof. Oh, yeah. So it's kind of like if you look at it up close, yeah, it's kind of mossy, almost like small little succulent plants, you know, so loads of little succulent plants.

Some of them can kind of come into flower in the summer and purpley and pinky flowers, but you literally buy it by the roll or by the meter square, but it comes in rolls of, I don't know, was it like 30, 40 centimeter rolls and you put out like a gravel base for kind of drainage and then you roll these out and there's no 

Jenny: issue with leaking in the roof or anything like that.

You know, as 

Kate: long as your roof has. Decent upstands and a good, you know, permit [00:10:00] or whatever, non permeable roof covering. And is there no maintenance in that then? In the dry months, you'd have to water it. You water it. Pretty much. What you used to do with the garden hose, did you? Yeah. Or no, sorry, with the shower hose.

The shower hose out the window, yeah. And like maybe a feed once a year or something like that. Yeah. The install, we did it ourself. We got it from, I think it was like Grass Roof Direct or something like that. I'll look it up. But we installed it ourself. Pretty low maintenance and it's way nicer to look out on from your bedrooms upstairs than looking out on a grey trocal roof or you know that basic kind of felted roof on extensions.

Yeah, 

Jenny: oh it makes a huge difference. Yeah. Could you do that? So I presume you can't walk on it if it's okay? No, you you have it at ground level? Like if you had a, maybe an area that you just wanted to look at? A lot of people 

Kate: put it on low garden sheds. Oh lovely, yeah. You can do it that way. A garden room, if you had a garden room you could do it on the roof of that.

Yeah, lovely. Yeah. So, you would be able to put it, I suppose, at that level, but you'd just have to have the drainage base pretty much, so that gravelly drainage base, and you wouldn't have, you'd be able [00:11:00] to walk across it because, you know, it would be 

Jenny: crushed. So if you didn't have artificial grass or real grass, what would you have put in instead?

What would be your next choice? Oh well the 

Kate: other areas I suppose, we had porcelain tiles in our last place. Yes. Which are pretty good and they're kind of lowish maintenance. And what colours did you have? We had a very light colour, kind of buff stone or buff yorkstone or something it was called.

Which is kind of a light creamy. So stuff did show up but they're very easy to clean because they're like tiles. They're like indoor tiles. Were they grouted? No, ours weren't but you can get them grouted. Yeah. Ours were laid on a kind of a gravel, kind of on a sand base. Yeah. So they're huge tiles. They were like 600 by 1200.

Cause the outdoor 

Jenny: grout is a pain to keep clean. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kate: So we didn't grout ours and it was fine. Yeah. It was on the sand base. We never had any movement on the base. Cause you wouldn't need 

Jenny: to I suppose. They don't need to be waterproof 

Kate: necessarily. Well they were such huge tiles. Maybe when you get smaller tiles for outdoor they might move a little bit more.

Yeah. I don't know but we never got any movement on ours anyway in the time we were there. Yeah. Now the only thing was, in [00:12:00] the kind of autumn when all the leaves fell, If you didn't get rid of those, and they stayed down, like they would stain, and then you'd have to be scrubbing the tiles for a while, you'd of spend a day maintenance every now and then.

Or if you left 

Jenny: like a rusty barbecue or something, or like lawn furniture on the living room. Yeah, you'd 

Kate: be going out with a pink paste or something like that. Yeah. 

Jenny: Nancy Burtwistle, you know, on Instagram, the one who was on Bake Off. She has, she has a video, a real, it's probably a good few months back now, where she was really scrubbing like an iron rusty stain off her garden tiles.

God, it was so satisfying with all the natural ingredients. I'm sure it was some combination of both. Baking powder and baking something else. That's all 

Kate: she 

Jenny: ever uses. It's hard work now but she got it done. 

Kate: threw her oven racks like really cakey. That was so sad. She just like threw it into the garden.

She goes like I'm gonna soak one in this tub and then she was like and then I'm just gonna fuck this one into the grass and it worked. She left it in the grass overnight and it came 

Jenny: back perfect. 

Kate: How did that happen? I 

Jenny: need 

Kate: an explanation for that one. Or is it kind of the Jew in the grass? Like, so I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't 

Jenny: know. I thought [00:13:00] I loved that one. I couldn't imagine that. It 

Kate: was so satisfying. That's a good one. Yeah. 

Jenny: I love tiling in the back garden. So I have a lot of color from my pink wall in my back garden. And I have some of the leftover tiles from my downstairs bathroom, which are multicolored terrazzo turned into a bench, which is actually covering pipe work.

So. I needed a bench right there. If I didn't have that, I love going all out with tiles, especially in a small courtyard garden. Yeah, absolutely. Like those Spanish y tiles. Gorgeous. Such a gorgeous way to bring some life into that small little space. Yeah. And one 

Kate: range that I love out in tile style is Capietra.

Jenny: Oh, that range. 

Kate: Oh, for all those pattern tiles and stripe tiles and kind of, you know, weathered worn kind of patterns. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Courtyard. 

Jenny: So if you, yeah, if you have a courtyard and you don't really want the sound of, you don't like the sound of grass or artificial grass, you don't really want the green.

Think about getting some Spanish tiling out there. Yeah. And then layering that with 

Kate: like potholes. Big pots is amazing. Yeah. Big pots of a leafy, maybe a big pot with like an olive tree if you south facing or something like that, or yeah. [00:14:00] Amazing. Amazing. That's so 

Jenny: stunning. I absolutely love that. Look.

Like if I was going again, I would consider, well I love what I have, but if I was going again, that's a look I would consider I, it's so fab. 

Kate: Before that kind of patio side of our garden, we haven't really decided what we're gonna do and we're kind of flip flop and we kind of go back and forth back to the tiles we had 'cause we liked them and they were easy.

And you know, when you have kids, it's easy for them to be cycling bikes over and wheel and stuff over it. But then I love. In old houses, the cobble block, like the brick block kind of, you know, and either herringbone or just straight lines, but I wonder, is the maintenance horrendous? I've never had it. I have to imagine it possibly is.

I mean, they look very porous, so like you'd imagine staining. Like the red brick 

Jenny: kind of blocks. 

Kate: Yeah, but they come in limestone, they come in loads of different colours. Some of them doing like, some of them doing like in long strips. Some of them are doing herringbone patterns, some of them are doing just square little blocks.

You can get rougher finish ones, you can get more polished versions, which I'm sure are a little bit easier to maintain. They're hard to fit because they're very deep, they're not like tiles, they're like made out of You can 

Jenny: get slips though, [00:15:00] but they're not as sturdy, they can crack. 

Kate: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you'd have to lay those like tile probably.

Yeah, exactly. I just love the look of them, I just think it's so I don't know, vintagey and lived in and gorgeous. And then another option, which is much more low maintenance, but I don't know if it looks as good as patterned concrete. Yeah. So you can get the patterned concrete look like cobble block in different colours and stuff now.

So they just kind 

Jenny: of do an imprint onto the concrete? Yeah, so they 

Kate: lay, you know, whatever, pour the concrete and then come in with these big rubber mats that have the kind of shape in it. Yeah. And print the kind of shape of cobblestone. I don't know, 

Jenny: would that be much easier to maintain though? 

Kate: It's just for weeds, I suppose.

Yeah, 

Jenny: oh god, yeah, the weeds. I 

Kate: wonder what the weeds come up through. Look, the weeds are coming no matter what you do. I know. They're 

Jenny: just, they come up through my heart's visual grass. Like, one sprang out of the front of my house the other day. 

Kate: Really? 

Jenny: Between the wall of my house and the concrete pavement outside.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're resilient. Where did they come from? I don't know. 

Jenny: I did read a great tip though, that pouring vinegar onto the weed really kills it and it worked. So that was brilliant. Yeah, a 

Kate: gardener that we had in recently when we moved into the house, he kind of cleared the old [00:16:00] stuff and cleared all the weeds and stuff.

And he only uses kind of vinegar, they don't use kind of chemical now. They were like, it just works the same, but your house kind of smells like chipper for a couple of days. I'm fine with that. Yeah, fine. Don't have an issue with that. But yeah, yeah. It's a kind of a safer way than, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I really love that kind of cobble block, potentially, instead of a tile.

So I'm still kind of on the fence as to whether I'll be able to. 

Jenny: Just cleaning, I wonder is it, are you looking at a power hose basically? Oh yeah, yeah. 

Kate: We have a big cartridge power hose that I use all the time in the garden anyway. I have it anyway. I have it anyway, you may as well go for it. Again, a slight curveball, and one of my favourite gardens I think of all time is Athena Calderon.

You'd love her. Yeah, but have you seen her Brooklyn townhouse? She doesn't live in that house anymore but her, she has this kind of travertine or limestone marble tiles checkerboard. It was checkerboard, yeah, like a black and white. Yeah, but it was like, it was actually, when you looked at it up close, it was a really faded kind of dusty blue and creamy checkerboard.

Jenny: I [00:17:00] loved that. And then the red brick 

Kate: of the house, oh, it's just, it's perfect. And then she did this huge hanging lantern right in the middle of the courtyard, which I thought just looked unreal. Yeah, yeah. That was very expensive, I'm sure. But like, yeah, gorgeous. But I love that checkerboard. I think that's such a great look.

Yeah, and there's a kind of an inexpensive way to do this. You can see it in most garden centers, are the kind of. You know, the standard kind of concrete paving slabs. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: They come in lots of colors now. 

Jenny: Okay. So you can check aboard yourself. You could. And it's 

Kate: way cheaper obviously, than doing any kind of marble or stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's also an option for floors. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: But then I suppose talking about like, so grass and your patio areas, or potentially all tiles if you have a smaller space or whatever. But you really have to think about, one of 

Jenny: the things, sorry, that you can't do is pebbles or wood chippings.

Oh 

Kate: yeah. 

Jenny: So this is, if you don't necessarily need like a. Very stable or flat surface for the rest of your areas and it is good for pets because they love peeing in pebble stones. Like if you're ever walking your dog out and there's like a neighbor's house or something has pebbles dog's [00:18:00] gonna go in there like.

There's this house actually, sorry. 

Kate: No go for it. There's this house I follow actually that has a pebble garden in London it's called Broccoli House or just outside of London because a lot of London gardens are quite small in these old houses like so you have to kind of add interest by kind of tricking people to look at the depth differently.

So they have a gravel garden, complete gravel garden, and then they have these long strips of tiles coming in from the sides that act as kind of a path through the pebbles. Oh yeah, 

Jenny: I love that. And then they 

Kate: have different kind of layers of planting. So you don't know how long the garden is when you're looking out.

Cool! It's a really cool, Broccoli House is the name of the Instagram. They only have cats. No kids or dogs to ruin it, but it's just an amazing way to kind of make a tiny space interesting or a small garden interesting 

Jenny: I love that and I do really like the look of pebbles The only problem is they do end up going everywhere, especially if you've kids That's not right.

And the same with those wood or the bark chippings or something like that. I love the look of that I think that looks amazing Yeah. But they will, they'll blow around. And they'll be messy. Yeah. 

Kate: And the, a good [00:19:00] tip for the gravel actually, we had it in our last house in the front. You can get this kind of honeycomb structure that you put down first and then the gravel gets poured into it so it doesn't move around as much.

Jenny: Yeah, it's a great idea. It's kind of a wire mesh y thing. Is that a rubber thing? Oh, it's actually 

Kate: plastic. It almost looks like a plastic honeycomb and it's about an inch thick and it comes out in big sheets. So you put out the big sheets and then you pour your gravel on top of it so then your gravel doesn't move around.

It kind of sits into all the pockets of the honeycomb. That's really clever. So yeah, it doesn't spill out the sides if you're riding your, like, whatever, bike wheel over and into the shed or whatever but yeah, it's a good trick for it. 

Jenny: So they're kind of the main options. 

Kate: Yeah. So like that's your kind of, I suppose, grass area, patio area, but then you have to think If you have a bigger space, are you zoning it?

Like, where are you sitting? What, you know, what time of day are you sitting there at? So, like we always say, how are you using the space? What's the aspect? If you have an east facing garden, you're going to sit out there maybe in the morning with your coffee. So, face the sun, do you know, because it's going to be cooler kind of sun in the morning.

If you have a west facing garden, you may need to think about a bit of shelter because, you know, the evening sun in your face could be really intense. 

Jenny: Yeah, 

Kate: and 

Jenny: [00:20:00] where in your garden gets the most sun? Like, is it down at the end? And if so, Like, are you going to manage that walk up and down to your house every time you want to get like a glass of water or if you're guests, like if you're going to be serving them dinner.

Think about all of that. 

Kate: Yeah. And if you have, say, say you have a north facing garden, right? So you don't get very much sun and you have to go right to the back of the garden to get the sun. And then you're trekking to the kitchen or whatever it is. Like be smart with how you plan out that space. So you might, your seating area might be far away, but you might do a little kind of mini cooking area down there.

Like it mightn't need to be anything huge, but it could be just like a worktop where you put a barbecue or something like that, or a big Yeti, you know, the big cool boxes, fill that full of ice and beer so you're not trekking back and forth. So have a little kind of mini outdoor kitchen. If you have one of those long gardens that only gets the sun at the back.

Jenny: Yeah. I love that you had an outdoor kitchen in your last house. We 

Kate: still have it. We brought it with us. Oh, you brought it with you. Yeah. We brought it with us. Yeah. Talking like outdoor kitchens. My God. When I post about that on my Instagram, the men come out of the woodwork. They like, I don't have very much of a male following.

I think I'm like eight or 9%, [00:21:00] but man, they love talking about outdoor kitchens. What's in it? What do you think of the Kamado Joe? And I'm like, I have no clue. Like, I cook in it. Like, never. My husband cooks in it all the time. Everyone seems to love 

Jenny: their Kamado Joe. I definitely will tell you, I love what comes out of your Kamado Joe.

But like, the Kamado Joe is like, 

Kate: I don't really get the, I don't know what the difference is. It's just like a barbecue with a lid, I guess. Sure. I think, like, my husband says it retains the heat better. So if you're slow cooking, it doesn't like lose or whatever and the heat fluctuations aren't. So if you're slow cooking things, it's a big deal.

Now, I will say Friday night was really sunny and we had margaritas and we had tacos. And Kian made tacos from scratch and, and griddled them on the Kamado Joe. So he cooked the meat on one side and the fresh tacos on the other side. And it was unreal. So like, that was really handy. And then we had pizza yesterday in the pizza oven.

Now the one thing I will say, we used to have an indoor pizza oven, now we have an outdoor pizza oven. And it's a concrete dome one. Oh yeah, they look amazing. Not really built for Ireland because concrete holds a lot of moisture. Oh yeah, yeah. So [00:22:00] in the colder, wetter months, it's impossible to get up to temperature.

Yeah. So you're burning loads of gas or you have to have the fire going for ages to kind of dry it out. Yeah, that's good to think about. So it's something to think about if you love making pizzas or you want a pizza. Maybe not a big concrete one in Ireland. Yeah. Or climate, it's just, or get it sealed 

Jenny: or something like that.

Or think about getting a title. Yeah. Maybe. I don't 

Kate: dunno. This is like a full big pick dome that maybe like a Goni or a uni is a better option for Ireland. Yeah. Everyone seems to love their is. Yeah. But no, I do love having kind of outdoor kind of, you know, cooking area. Especially in this kind of weather.

Or like, I don't want to be indoors. Oh, I'm totally looking. And we cooking and the kids are playing in the garden. Like I just feel like we didn't leave it all weekend until we were going to bed. 

Jenny: Yeah. Like my house is so tiny that putting. Putting cooking apparatus in my garden makes no sense because it's basically in the kitchen anyway, like it wouldn't be any closer, but I still love the idea.

I just think they're so lovely. There's something so nice just about, maybe it's because it's so rare in Ireland, but there's just something so lovely about sitting outdoors and being able to cook away. [00:23:00] What material do you go for, for an outdoor kitchen? 

Kate: Oh, for an outdoor kitchen. Like if you're building it, this is if 

Jenny: you're building a unit.

Yeah, 

Kate: yeah. So if you're building a custom unit, so our unit was custom and it was made by. Our lovely kitchen place, Savvy Kitchens and they kind of did it on a design that Keen had drawn up on Google SketchUp. So the actual carcass, it can't be kind of standard, you know, ply or MDF or anything like that because it'd just swell outside.

It's actually this kind of hard core ply. It's 

Jenny: actually 

Kate: used for horse boxes apparently. That's what he told us. So it's totally like, it's bulletproof and it doesn't swell. It doesn't, you know, even in the wet weather, it's been perfected. It's like four or five years old at this stage. And then the doors, we just did slotted burnt latch.

So that 

Jenny: stuff 

Kate: is 

Jenny: sick. It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous. It's so nice. Go and look at Kate's Instagram at Victorian Rat Mines. It is so beautiful. I really love it. 

Kate: And the thing about Burnt Larch is it's nice is it has a natural kind of weather resistance. So it's like charged naturally with like whatever [00:24:00] flame or blowtorch or however they do it.

And you don't really have to maintain that. Done. Yeah, you don't have to paint or anything. what about the countertop? The countertop, we just went with granite and we did a honed finish. So. Counter shop's black as well, and we just went with kind of a satin whatever, matte home finish. And there's no 

Jenny: issue with granite because that wouldn't be porous, I suppose.

Whereas quartz might be a bit more porous. 

Kate: Yeah, because even for black and it's that kind of matte finish, it's kind of fine to be a bit more weathered looking I suppose. Yeah. We didn't bother going for like a light or a white 'cause we felt like we might get more stain in it. It would look so dirty.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So yeah, that's who went with the countertops. That's what we don. We have a Kamado Joe and the pizza oven there and then we have this. Yeti cooler that we just throw ice and beers and whatever if most people are there. 

Jenny: So yours isn't plumbed or hooked up to a gas or anything?

No, we have a gas bottle 

Kate: space underneath for the pizza oven. But our pizza oven is actually, it can be used with solid fuel as well. So sometimes we use wood and sometimes we use gas. Yeah, but I yeah, it's definitely worth looking at [00:25:00] outdoor kitchens, but the ones online are bonkers money They are off the charts expensive.

Yeah, they're mad expensive. It's not, they're not very complicated. So if you want a good joiner. 

Jenny: I'll, I need to look it up after this, I'll put it in the show notes. But there's, Ikea have one, it's basically just a frame of kind of a metal kind of kitchen. It's not the most beautiful thing in the world, but like if you're a bit creative you could add something onto that to really dress it up.

It just has to form the skeleton of what you're doing and it's like it looks good. Fine. Do you know ours is actually a steel 

Kate: frame and then it's just the wood in the inside either has to be good, you know, weatherproof wood or it just needs to be well sealed and painted. Just kind of well maintained, well maintained, but like the price of some of them online are bonkers.

So if you have a good joiner, ask them, can they make one? 

Jenny: I saw gorgeous steel outdoor kitchens, you know, 

Kate: yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Jenny: So like, I don't love that look to be honest, the stainless steel look, I think it's a bit cold and kind of American. It's not. Yeah, I suppose it is. And it's very commercial, so it's kind of like you're working in a commercial kitchen, which is fine, but I just don't think it's as cozy.

But what I [00:26:00] saw a lot of, and one thing I saw a lot of recently, is really lovely painted or dyed brushed steel. 

Kate: Okay. 

Jenny: So, what I saw was, like, the whole, basically the whole frame of the kitchen is just made from that. They're expensive but they just look amazing and they work really well outside because it's basically bulletproof.

And then the countertop is made from the same material. 

Kate: Okay. 

Jenny: Which is so handy. 

Kate: Yeah. It's very easy to kind of keep clean and sanitise and stuff. Yeah. Stainless steel obviously as well. 

Jenny: Yeah. Now, and with the painted ones it could chip a little bit so you'd need chopping boards and stuff like that.

But the rest of it, I'm only guessing at that, I don't know if it would. I'll find the name, I've seen a few recently, I'll find the name. Do you know what's an 

Kate: unreal outdoor kitchen? It's the lake actually. Oh, our kitchen, it's real Aussie, kind of all white, amazing. And she's kind of getting an overhang over it.

Look at, look at hers. It's the complete opposite of ours. Ours is all black, hers is like all white, but it's like, 

Jenny: yeah, 

Kate: you know. 

Jenny: And overhang in general, that's a whole other thing. Like a gazebo, I've been thinking for ages about getting a retractable awning put over [00:27:00] my garden. Cause it would make the space so much more usable all year round.

Like I could really use it as an extra room. And like, I kind of have the seating to do it when it comes to that. I mean, that's. And I find that so handy cause like both of my kitchen sliding doors open out into that. Every year I think about it and then I, I haven't gotten around to it, but yeah. 

Kate: I would 110 percent you know, plan for an overhang or an awning or something if I was doing plans now.

We had it in our last house. It's unbelievable. It's just invaluable. Like just having that little bit of an overhang in Ireland means the doors can be open, your floor doesn't get wet inside. You can still sit out there if it's kind of spinning rain. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jenny: Especially with kids. You want them sitting in the shade.

Yeah. Like it's ideal. Or somebody with my skin who just can't be in the sun. You really need the shade. 

Kate: And overhang is one thing. And actually a heater in Ireland is pretty important. Yeah. If you plan to kind of sit out there kind of late in the evening or whatever. So some of those strip heaters now, obviously a lot of the standup gas ones are kind of gone.

They're kind of redundant, but those little strip, are they halogen heaters or something like that? They can be pretty good as well. 

Jenny: A lot of them have built in heaters now. [00:28:00] Yeah. So if you're going, if you're doing the whole hog of installing an audio. Oh, the awning is, yeah, the awning itself. They can come because they come with lighting.

Some of them are really nice, you know, fairy lights kind of stripped across the top of it. Obviously you can just hang up your own lighting or if you've got like a plug outside, but not everyone does. Yeah. And then some of them come with heaters as well. I love, so it's electric heaters built into the awning.

Kate: I love the striped fabric awnings. Oh, they're so pretty, so cheap. That's what I would get. Like percent. That's what I would get. I love those. 

Jenny: Or I love the cantilevered ones. Yeah. I think they look really nice because then you can open them a bit if you just want a little bit of kind of dapple shade or you can close them completely.

I think that looks great. 

Kate: You know what's also, if you don't want to get an awning or you don't have a wall to maybe build an awning onto, a big parasol. Yeah. A parasol that literally fills the space. And we got one last year when we bought our garden furniture and the parasol was pretty much as a gift.

As expensive as the base, you know, the base was as expensive because you need a really big, heavy kind of solid base for a parasol that big, but we use it all the time. And especially with kids, you're kind of a bit more conscious of them being in the sun. So just having it [00:29:00] up or covering half the sofas or whatever outside.

So yeah, a good parasol is definitely worth it too. 

Jenny: And I love those ones. I think you're as Your one is like this where it doesn't, it's like the arm is off to the side and then it hangs down so there isn't a big central stem. And you can kind of 

Kate: tilt it as well. Yeah. So you can kind of tilt it towards kind of the sun or away just to cover kind of half of it if some people want to sit in the sun.

But yeah, totally worth it. Totally worth it to have a parasol. 

Jenny: And then the other options really are just gazebo. Like you can get gazebos that you put up and you put them down and they're, you know, they're kind of, I do love 

Kate: pergolas as well. Like, yeah, timber ones and then they might have a climber on them or something like that.

We used to have one of those in our old home house in Limerick like years ago. 

A timber pergola and then we had wisteria, you know, those purple flowers all kind of vining through them. And it was lovely. But like, then it's bare kind of mostly. Yeah. Because wisteria is only around for a short time.

Jenny: But one thing that having plants or vines around a pergola does is it's a natural cooling area as well. Which is really, [00:30:00] really nice. And that's something to think about if you're, you know, if where you get the most sun is down the end of your garden and you need to kind of make a camp out there, then they're not that expensive to to buy and they're not that hard to make if you're kind of handy.

Kate: Yeah, it is nice sitting under a pergola. And I suppose then you think of your furniture. 

Jenny: So this is key. We probably should have covered this earlier in the episode, but thinking about your furniture, like think about it during the planning stages. Don't just go and buy a set of garden furniture.

Like think about how much do you need? Are you, do you need to be. Like, is it going to be realistic for you to have a lot of chairs sitting out there? Do you want to entertain outside? Is that going to happen regularly? Like, what's the easiest way to do that? Same as every other room in the house. 

Kate: And if you're tight on a patio space, a type of banquette 

Jenny: kind of works 

Kate: out there as well.

Do you know the way? 

Jenny: That's kind of what I have. 

Kate: Yeah, it is essentially your kind of tile bench, but also you know when some grass areas are raised versus the patio area. Sometimes there's a natural kind of bench or seat that can be built into the grass [00:31:00] work. 

Jenny: And that's such a handy way because like you're going to have to have something there anyway.

So like where my bench is, something had to be there anyway. There's pipe work there and there's a step anyway back to, because it's a little bit lower than the ground level. So something had to be there anyway. It may as well be a bench. And then it just doesn't take up space. Like there isn't just a load of chairs sitting around.

I have squeezed, I think 12 people around my back garden table. Yeah. Thanks to neighbours loaning me extra chairs and like squeezing into that bench. Thanks. But, it, like, it's just, it makes, it's really, really handy, it makes such a difference to have it. And chairs, they just get rusty and they just get a bit, I don't know.

Kate: If you're in the building stages, I'd consider levels. You know, like, like I was saying, your, your grass verge might be a natural leveler step. And then build in the seating to that because then you don't have to buy the seating. And I think people naturally gravitate toward those kind of ledges. To sit up against when you're having a party or people in the garden or whatever.

So I think if you're at the building stages, think of that. But also, yeah, furniture, garden furniture is kind of crap and kind of expensive. We 

Jenny: don't really have a [00:32:00] great range. And I'm not talking, I know there's some fabulous shops out there, but we don't have it in general. Like a very wide range of great garden furniture in Ireland.

And I think 

Kate: the stuff that you see in like, Australia and whatever is built for those climates. So the ones here have to be so robust and like cushions and all that are a lovely idea. But unless you have the storage for it. 

Jenny: And really think about that. Are you going to be truckling in with arm loads of cushions day in day out for the few sunny days that we have and then just, they're kind of just taking up space and getting a bit musty the rest of the time.

And if you leave them out for one bloody night, God help, like, you're trying to dry them out for two weeks. A bit of dew gets on them, like, you know, they're, they're just going to be really frustrating. Unless you do get that really sturdy material that just can live outside, but then, you know, because it's Ireland, because it's so damp, it just tends to get mouldy no matter what you do.

Yeah. Like a bit of moss grows somewhere and it just. It's 

Kate: hard. So we bought a cushion set last year and I bought like a, you know, a tarp kind of cover, waterproof cover. And if it was kind of rain was forecast, I'd cover it over. But sometimes like a rain shower comes and you're like, [00:33:00] shit, the cushion is still outside and you're kind of running out and you're trying to do it.

You're trying to pull up with the cushion or the cover. And this year I was like, not doing it like, cause they were wet more than they were dry. So we bought this big, you know, like cushion box, like a huge cushion box. It takes all of them. It's so easy to fire them into. So that's waterproof itself. Like, yeah, that's really covered in.

It hasn't had a drip of water inside of it since we bought it. And it's so worth it. And it kind of acts like a bench seat almost. It's a little higher than a standard bench, but it's still like leanable up again, like comfortably lean up against it or sit up on top of it. So that's a good idea, but definitely consider storage if you want to get soft furnishings and consider maintenance.

So like obviously the Rattan or poly Rattan is really popular in Ireland because it's zero maintenance, right? And then you have kind of a lot of aluminium furniture, which is usually powder coated. That's kind 

Jenny: of my preference. I think they're kind of powder coated. They're nice 

Kate: slim frames as well. Yeah.

And they're quite light. Yeah. They don't take up a lot of wall. So easy to drag around. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So definitely think about like You know [00:34:00] where it needs to go when you're not going to be using it. How can you stack them? How can you you know? Some of the rattan stuff is just not stackable like so it'll be as big in the winter in your garden as it is in The summer when you're using it so definitely consider that and then I love some kind of like wood furniture But unless you're going to maintain it and paint it don't because it'll rot.

Jenny: It needs to be that super engineered wood And it just doesn't last. It doesn't. I actually have two wooden chairs. They're just like seven year old Ikea And they've been out in my garden for a few years, and one of them is now growing mushrooms. They just don't last. It just is what it is, you know, unfortunately.

But 

Kate: yeah, you do have to maintain wood for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that would be my kind of two cents on Garden furniture, but I do believe in garden furniture. You get what you pay for. Unfortunately, I just don't think there's bargains. 

Jenny: Just think ahead I think just be realistic like don't go shopping for garden furniture on a sunny day because You will think that like this is it and I can live like this and everything's gonna be amazing.

It's not it's gonna be wet and Just yeah be really [00:35:00] realistic about how you're going to use it. Yeah 

Kate: I actually bought this cheap cheap set on Sclum Two years ago or something. And I don't regret it actually. It was so cheap, right? And made. com had one that I wanted. It was kind of an aluminum frame one.

Then it sold out. I waited for ages and I was like, do you know what? I'm going to miss the summer. It's like 10 to 12 week lead time. I'm just going to buy the sclone one. And I don't regret it. The cushions were, I mean, unbelievably crap that came with it. As in, you'd sit in it and you'd feel the aluminum frame straight away underneath.

But the aluminum frame was fine. Aluminium, extruded aluminium, aluminium is extruded aluminium, like so, it's lightweight, it doesn't go that far wrong, and what we did then is we just bought Ikea cushions and covers and put them on that aluminium frame and it was actually fine so that's what I would say.

Do you know? Yeah, 

Jenny: that's one good idea. There's 

Kate: not really great deals to be had unless you're willing to put in a little bit of a tweak or upcycle to it. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jenny: Second hand is probably your best bet as well. Yeah. 

, TrollAvris. ie, TrollDoneDeal. Yeah. I have a look for secondhand stuff because [00:36:00] people move all the time and they need to get rid of garden stuff.

Jenny: Sometimes you can get it for free. 

Kate: And like I said, people buy garden furniture to suit a certain space. It's not something that's usually adaptable when you change gardens. Yeah, 

Jenny: yeah. So that's one good thing to do. And then what I did was went for built in. furniture because my courtyard is so tiny and I really wanted to have outdoor dining for those really sunny days, for having people over for drinks, for the barbecues that I do in my oven.

But I also wanted to have an extra dinner table, like if I was having a big group, which is where the awning would be really, really handy. , I wanted to have like extra dining space if I needed it. If I needed almost an extra room, which is where that awning would come in really handy. And it was my builder shout out to Jason Doyle down at Construction. He's amazing. He basically built a fold down garden table that folds away fully against the wall from the leftover cladding from my roof extension.

So, Which is cedar. So that's perfect for [00:37:00] outdoors because it's bulletproof basically. 

It's brilliant for a courtyard. Or if you don't have, you know, if built in isn't really an option or getting something custom made isn't an option, even just those hanging tables, like installing a few hooks on your courtyard wall or your small garden wall or whatever, and having those, yeah, those fold away hanging tables, like it's just, it's such a no brainer.

It really makes sense. 

Kate: And then the other option for kind of outdoor furniture is like cast iron, they're so heavy but sometimes they're nice and they last forever. They last 

Jenny: forever.

Now they can rust a little bit so just be careful of them. There's a little bit of a keep and just kind of. 

Kate: Getting them re coated. Yeah. But they do 

Jenny: last forever and like with a couple of cushions they can be quite comfortable. They look lovely. Yeah. 

Kate: I think they look really cool. They're more kind of stately.

And do you know they're very traditional. Kind of old school patterns and stuff like that. But do you know Siletti? That you have the. Oh I love Siletti, yeah. The light, the lizard light and I have the monkey light. They actually have a version of that wrought iron furniture. Cool. Susie McAdam had it in her old garden, I remember seeing it on her Instagram.

But it's a cool kind of pattern in the wrought iron, I thought. Very cool! Yeah, yeah. 

Yeah, [00:38:00] there's loads of, I suppose there's loads of options for outdoor furniture, but think of maintenance, think of where you're going to put the cushions, think about where you're going to stack it in the winter when you don't want to take up a load of space. 

Jenny: And be realistic. Don't get too excited. It's old and a dream of ours.

Be realistic about what you're actually going to 

Kate: do. Don't buy it this week. You're looking out at the sun and you're like, oh wow. I'm just going to buy loads of really expensive garden furniture with cushions. 

Jenny: It'll be fine. I'll get white tiles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of back to cooking, what do you make of fire pits?

Kate: I don't know. It needs to be very calm days to kind of light them at all. Yeah, it can get very smoky. Smelling like smoke, I think.

And then half the people in the, around the fire pit are having a lovely time and the other half are getting smoked out of it. This happened to us in 

Jenny: Canada even last summer. It's not just an Irish thing. Like I always find, it's just, and everything stinks of smoke then for ages after. Yeah, yeah. 

Kate: Like, I like the idea of them, but I don't know, unless, maybe if you're kind of, you know, a bit more rural.

But I think in the city, you just can't. Or if you 

Jenny: have a very protected garden. Yeah. You know. Yeah. [00:39:00] Because they're great for heat obviously, and they're lovely, and the atmosphere is so nice. The atmosphere is 

Kate: lovely, yeah. 

Jenny: Marshmallows and everything. It's lovely. Yeah, yeah, 

Kate: sure. But I suppose proximity to neighbours would be what I think.

Yeah. And the wind. How often would you use it? Yeah. So I don't know. 

Jenny: You can get kind of little tabletop flames, like bioethanol in fireplaces, like outdoor fire. Yeah. 

Kate: There's a lot of that. That's kind of a win win really. That is for sure.

And I think like loads of the outdoor furniture now has some sort of functionality built into the center, whether it's like an ice trough for drinks or something or like, like that, a little flame or whatever. I saw one with like a keep warm plate so you know you can put like candles inside or whatever.

So the one 

Jenny: that was in The Gentleman, you know that movie The Gentleman? I didn't watch it. The, oh god, who's the director? Guy Ritchie. Guy Ritchie. Apparently he's so into outdoor cooking that he designed that table. If anyone has seen The Gentleman, it's a table that has like all of, all of the functionality in the middle and it has, you know, an overhang and it's just like a super table, it's perfect.

He designed that himself and I think there actually is a limited range on. That's available. 

Kate: The Guy Ritty table. 

Jenny: That's 

Kate: very [00:40:00] cool. Yeah. One place we didn't actually talk about, which is also a garden, is kind of roof gardens. Oh yeah, or balconies, 

Jenny: especially if you're in an apartment.

Yeah, balconies. 

Kate: Anything not on ground level. 

Jenny: Yeah. And 

Kate: you had this. 

Jenny: I do have a little roof garden so what I did there was I put a sliding window into my bedroom so that I could climb out of it easily and get onto the roof of my extension. It's not strictly illegal, but I don't think it's like there's a whole bunch of planning issues around, around those around kind of roof gardens, but actually they've relaxed quite a bit in the past few years as Dublin City Council in particular has recognized the need for kind of more outdoor spaces and more outdoor living.

So worth looking into what's the most up to date. But what I did there was I did the same thing with the artificial grass. My builder made a frame for it, like a wooden frame, and I hammered it into it so that it would be fixed to the roof. Okay. You know, without having to like drill into the roof itself.

And then I have some kind of potted plants up around there, which is a nice little trim around the edges. Yeah. Yeah. You could put a little, some, is there something up [00:41:00] there? Yeah, there's grasses. Yeah. You could put a little kind of value straight around there. I'd love like a clear perspex. Small little, what's the word? 

, value straight. And yeah, yeah.

So I'd love like a clear kind of prospects at the value straight. Another thing that I've seen a few of my neighbors do, which looks really good, it's just kind of have that bamboo screen kind of wrap around screen. Not too tall, but just enough to give it a little area. Yeah, I think that's great. No, I love that.

I can't get furniture up there at one hour, I probably could lift up like, I'd need very heavy furniture because up that high you're exposed. Okay. So anything that you're planting, if you've potted plants or anything up there, just bear in mind that they need to really stand up to heavy winds. So get heavy, heavy pots and make sure that the plants are well vetted in there.

And then any furniture and thing up there is likely to blow off. I mean, we have had some really, really windy days this year. So personally, I just bring out a blanket when I want to lie out there. But I could bring up like just some low sun loungers, but they need to be really, really heavy and not blow away. 

Kate: But one thing we didn't talk about in furniture actually, and could potentially work for a [00:42:00] rooftop garden or a balcony or something is, you know, my egg chair.

Oh, your hanging 

Jenny: chair. I need those outdoor versions of that. They're so nice for outdoors. I need 

Kate: above is like a little hook or something, so if you have any kind of overhang or something like that I actually considered buying an outdoor frame for mine. Now mine is an indoor one, so I wouldn't leave it outdoors for long, but just on like sunny days that I could clip it off inside and clip it on the outside.

That's 

Jenny: really, really nice. I love that idea or speaking of hanging things. So I mentioned I have a hammock because I wanted like lounge chair to be sitting outside in on sunny days like we had this week, but I don't want to be storing it. I don't have space for it. 

So I got two wall plates with hooks on them in screw fix. And then just bought a hammock online, which folds up into nothing. I store it in my ottoman in my living room. And then I hang that up and I lie out and it's heaven on earth. So nice. Really recommend that as a solution.

Anything else on balconies? On balconies, you were 

Kate: talking about kind of potted plants and stuff there. And we talked about grass, but we didn't really talk about plants. Like, I'm not Dermot Gavin, I'm not the kind of green fingered one [00:43:00] in our relationship.

But I do like to do a little bit of gardening. And I'm not going to get planting kind of plants here for anyone. But generally I try and pick a kind of a mix of pollinator friendly plants, native plants. Like if you really want kind of impact. I usually keep, keep to the same color or at least the same kind of shade.

So like, if you like purple flowers, go for dark purple, light purple, and maybe some whites. Don't be putting yellow, orange, purple blues, all in the same garden. Unless you're an expert 

Jenny: gardener, it's quite hard to get it really right. Yeah. And it just 

Kate: doesn't, you don't get much impact I think. So we've kind of picked for our house kind of purples, we've kind of verbena and stuff like that.

And they're all kind of hardy enough and they come back and then we have the white of the hydrangeas, right? So we've kind of kept generally a purplish theme. So I think when all the flowers come out, it's real impactful when you look out and that. That's really nice. Now, I don't like, I always said I don't like yellow flowers.

I don't like daffodils. I love them. No, I just don't like. I love them. I don't like marigolds. I don't like yellowy, orangey flowers. [00:44:00] Now in saying that, I ate my words because there's a house on my road and in April, their front garden is all yellow, orange and red. And it looks like a fire. Like the whole garden is full.

I And I love that. And I think it's like, you know, it's really impactful because again, it's all the same kind of tones. So I think if you're thinking about planting plans, think about that and think about like, again, maintenance. Yeah. How 

Jenny: much are you actually going to do? Be honest. 

Kate: You could invest a load of money in plants and unless you prep them right for the next year after the summer is over, they won't come back again.

And then you're going to spend money again. So think about your planting plans and it may well, pay to do an online kind of session with their landscaper. During COVID they all started doing this and I follow a few gardeners like Pollyanna Wilkinson in the UK and Shelley Hugh Jones, I think her name is.

They're so good for just planting plans, ideas and just general kind of maintenance. But following those kind of people and you know, Dermot Gavin or whatever, just to get some ideas for kind of plants that do well in Irish [00:45:00] climates. But also what might do well in your garden might not do well in my garden.

Yeah, you just think 

Jenny: about like what direction is your garden facing? How much wind do you get? Yeah, the drainage. Is there coverage there? If 

Kate: it's very wet, is it very dry? Some plants really don't do well in our garden because it's completely south facing. So it's like way too dry. You know, intense kind of sun.

So think about that. Don't just buy plants because you like the look of them. And there's so many good garden centers.

So when you're doing your planting plans, like talk to them. I think those garden centers are really good at advising kind of what would be good. You know, in your particular garden, the aspect, all that kind of stuff.

Jenny: Yeah, lovely. Think 

Kate: about maintenance though because it's a lot of work. It is a lot of work, it, it's just going to die. 

Jenny: And if you are thinking about putting plants on your balcony especially, Think about like, do you need a hose? Do you have access to water out there? . Like if you're somewhere to store a bag of compost. But I do think low maintenance leafy greens, you really can't go wrong. Like if you're getting confused with colour or you just are like, God, that all sounds like a lot, which for me it does.

I really just think some leafy greens are fantastic. [00:46:00] So just pots and I love like a mixture of different styles and sizes of pots. I really don't have any rules at all when it comes to that. I think just like go out to home base or not to home base. What am I thinking of? Go out to home, to 

Kate: home sense. 

Jenny: Go 

Kate: out to Homesense, 

Jenny: go to TK Maxx.

Kate: A 

Jenny: home base for the plants. But go out to Maxx. They always have loads of really nice garden pots. And just get them, mix them and like measure it out and see what you can fit. And it provides a lovely little privacy screen. Even if it's just one side of your balcony that you need a little privacy on.

It's lovely. And the other thing that we used to do actually when I was renting is the balcony overhead. The, or the house, yeah, the balcony overhead of ours, it had kind of like this little wire mesh thing underneath that we were able to get hooks into. So we have some potted plants hanging from the roof as well, just some kind of trailing greens and stuff.

With some hanging lanterns too. We put like candles in there from Ikea. So that is another potential, you know, area or space that you can use. And if there isn't that kind of wire mesh thing, maybe you can install some hooks up there without damaging [00:47:00] anything.

Kate: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So definitely think of. How much are you going to maintain, but also the aspect and how it's going to do in your garden. But I do think if you're going to put in like artificial grass, do soften it out with things like that or do soften it out with pollinator friendly plants like the bees and butterflies and all that are going to love.

Jenny: One last one to touch on around, I think we could, there's so much, there's actually so much more we could talk about on gardens but, aside from the basics of kind of the furniture and all that kind of stuff, lighting is really important so make sure you're planning to have, The, to have some nice lighting.

My absolute favorite outdoors, and I never really strayed from this, is those up down lights. I think they're just perfect. Yeah, yeah, 

Kate: yeah. 

Jenny: Like the wall mounted kind of tubular ones. 

Kate: Yeah, and they're relatively inexpensive as well. You can get them in nearly every finish. Yeah, 

Jenny: and then the other thing I have in my garden is I have fairy lights woven into my wall.

So they are solar powered. I got them from the solar center in the UK. They come with a solar panel so they charge up all day and they don't last very long in winter time. They kind of turn on around 4pm and turn off like 7pm. But summertime I get all night out of them. Or you know, [00:48:00] most of the rest of the year I get all night out of them.

So, lovely little sprinkling and they just come on automatically. We have 

Kate: a few garden lights kind of on the stake, on a stake. You know, in our bushes. So they up light kind of. I think solar 

Jenny: powered too? 

Kate: No, they're plug in. Okay, 

Jenny: but you can get solar powered ones. You can get solar 

Kate: powered ones but like I suppose for bigger spaces you want to light up the whole space you probably need them plugged in 

I love that look like uplit Yes and greenery, it's so nice. It's so beautiful. It really, really like makes a big impact and draws your eye way back down the garden even in the evening time. 

Jenny: I think that's a lot of gardens that we can definitely come back to gardens like I've loads more to say on the topic one thing I love in gardens is mirrors we'll talk about that another time I think there it's such a great way to make a space that look bigger especially if you've only got a little courtyard garden outdoor mirrors they're fab climbers climbing ivy one little tip I actually will say those of you who are listening who are also who have a really really small little courtyard garden putting in a fake door In your wall makes your space feel a [00:49:00] lot bigger.

So if you have that kind of hemmed in feeling of just, you know, two courtyard walls and it's all a bit of ever, a mirror will really, really help that make things a lot brighter and make you feel bigger, but there's still a little bit of a claustrophobic feel to that. So putting in like a a 

Kate: secret 

Jenny: garden door, it doesn't have to go anywhere.

It's an amazing way to make it feel bigger because immediately it feels like. This is going somewhere, the space is a lot bigger than what you see, even if it isn't. 

Kate: And there's a load of, like, really huge steel frame kind of mirrors now, that would look like an archway as well, I'd say, if you placed it well.

And that's another way of kind of putting it. Yeah, those mirrors with the kind 

Jenny: of curved dome tops or arch tops, yeah. It almost looks like 

Kate: there could be an archway through to somewhere else. That's a great idea, yeah. It makes a huge difference. Yeah, mirrors are a great call as well, definitely. 

Jenny: Okay, we're gonna have to do another one on this, but that's it for now.

I think we are. I think those are the basics. Enjoy 

Kate: the rest of the sun. I think it's kind of going today, but hopefully it'll be back. Yes. Great. We 

Jenny: deserve it after last summer. 

Kate: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And we will see you next time. Thanks. 

Jenny: See you in two [00:50:00] weeks. Bye. 

Jen: If you found that episode useful, please do us a huge favor by giving us a like, and a few stars and especially click that subscribe button. Thank you.