Ideas to turn your outdoor space into a garden retreat

Get a relaxed outdoor vibe with a weatherproof sofa and matching coffee table. Dress with cushions and pot plants, then sit back and relax!

Even a basic trough planter looks exotic when you give it the mosaic treatment. Match it with a mosaic planting scheme of silver, red and white.

Consider a pebble garden for spots you don’t want to water. You can still include plants – succulents and cacti only!

How cute do succulents look in a mosaic urn? The process is easier than you might think – just glue pieces of tile, glass beads and shells into position, then finish with grout. Voila!

For recycled style, a wooden pallet painted in soft grey serves as the perfect vertical garden.

To create colour in sun-baked parts of the garden, use vibrant foliage plants like the flapjack kalanchoe.

The easiest way to work with sloping ground is to plant tough, ground-hugging plants – here, succulents, rhoeo, yucca and purple fountain grass.

For brilliantly tough colour, try a flowering crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii.) in a sunsoaked container.

How’s this for a front-door view? Hide the neighbours with dense perimeter plantings of shrubs and palms.

Try creative recycling. This old vacuum cleaner hose is reborn as a hanging garden of succulents.