Weather permitting, elegance can be accomplished no matter the surroundings. On the patio or in that curious little corner of the backyard, you can create an entertaining space fit for family, friends or simply enjoying coffee amongst the critters. There is always a way to make it pretty. Roll up your sleeves. Here comes your inspiration.

FIND A SPACE

Select an easily accessible and safe location. Summer brings a plethora of insects to your backyard, which must be managed for any outdoor gathering. You don’t want to be known for sending your guests away with mosquito-bite-filled ankles as parting gifts. Surround your space with citronella candles or torches. Individualized insect-control options are available.

USE PROPER LINENS

Every set of outdoor furniture needs a clean and pretty canvas to get the party started. Choose a basic white, colored or print tablecloth; and don’t be afraid to layer one on top of the other. Welcome a little more elegance into the space by using cloth napkins and decorative rings. Yes, you and your guests are worth bringing out the good stuff.

SELECT TABLE DÉCOR

You don’t have to be a prize-winning table-setter to create an elegant setting. Colored glass dishes are a great choice, especially if you have a beautiful tablecloth underneath. This provides a fun peek-a-boo at every glance. Choose coffee cups that fit your décor, and size should be considered if space is limited. Shining and placing your utensils provides the final balance to your arrangement.

USHER IN THE FOOD

Keep in mind that your food will be exposed to the elements, which may melt your perfect butter sculpture or crumble the moistest baked items. Setting your butter plate in a bowl of ice will sustain a proper temperature. Serve your food in covered containers when possible to ensure freshness throughout your event. Urging others to take seconds, quickly, will eliminate any concerns you have about optimal culinary conditions. Pour beverages with prestige straight from the bottle, or use a sterling coffee carafe or water pitcher. Feel free to clip a few flowers from around the yard for your centerpiece. This will meld your special area with the beautiful surroundings.

UNLEASH THE FUN

The intent of creating an outdoor entertaining space is to enjoy your natural surrounds with friends and loved ones. Whether you desire a relaxing, romantic vibe or a more ruckus affair, the time you spend and the care you take to make things pretty will be time well spent. You deserve to experience summer at its best. So get outside, find your special spot and get busy.

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A romantic garden usually contains roses, beds of wildflowers and a shady place to sit. But what if you added an unexpected surprise with tiny vintage gardens for fairies? Visitors will be delighted, and you’ll be able to use your garden as another canvas to feature beautiful antiques. Here’s how to do it.

Find the right piece.

Almost any vintage item you find at a flea market or estate sale can become a garden container. From a wood hutch or old animal trough to a chipped teapot or gilded frame, add vintage items that are large or small to your garden. Just make sure the piece has enough room for soil and plant roots. Even an item as small as a teacup can transform into a miniature garden if you don’t crowd it with too many plants.

Prep your piece.

Before you add plants to your container, make sure it’s ready for outdoor weather. For wood or painted pieces, add a protective stain or spray to prevent fading and rot. Metal pieces may gain a little rust, but this will only add charm to the piece. You’ll also need to waterproof the container, so line it with plastic or a rubber waterproofing material. You won’t want your antique wood crate to rot when you water the strawberries you’ve planted inside.

Plant the flowers.

First, make sure the piece has good drainage. If it doesn’t, or the drainage would cause rot, place a layer of pebbles or pea gravel before you add soil. The rocks will act as a water filter and keep the water from sitting in the soil too long, which can damage the plants. Then add your soil and flowers.

Create a sanctuary for fairies.

Tiny creatures need small spaces with miniature accessories. Plant a low ground cover to act as a grassy meadow or lawn; then add small plants and flowers. Finish it off with the accents. Decorate with a fairy-sized table and chair set, or a bench on which the fairies can relax. Don’t forget to add the fairies too!

A bouquet of fresh flowers can do so much to brighten up your home. The scent, the bright colors and the reminder of the world outside will add a breath of fresh air to the room. The downside of fresh bouquets is the cost—the flowers will last for about a week (if you’re lucky), and if you want to keep fresh flowers in your home on a regular basis, the costs will add up to a pretty penny.

Luckily, there’s a solution—grow your own bouquets! “You can fill your house with flowers without spending a fortune,” writes Alex Mitchell in her new book, Gardening on a Shoestring. The book is a helpful gardening resource full of tips and tricks for making the most of your outdoor space without breaking the bank. Here are her instructions for how to create a cutting garden in your own backyard.

What You’ll Need:

• An area of ground 6 x 9 feet, cleared of weeds and stones and raked into a fine tilth
• Tape measure
• Garden twine
• Twigs or sticks
• Scissors
• 6 packets of seed: Bupleurum griffithli, Rudbeckia hirta ‘Marmalade,’ Cosmos ‘Sensation Mix,’ Cornflower ‘Blue Ball,’ Ammi majus, Agrostemma githago (Corncockle), or seeds suited to your planting region
• Rake
• Watering can with rose attachment/garden hose

When To Start:

Mid- to late spring

How to Do it:

Divide your growing area into six equal squares, staking out the grid with twine tied to sticks pushed into the soil. Then sow each square with a different variety of seed. Rake over the soil gently to cover the seeds and water well. Keep the patch weeded and protect the young shoots from slugs until established. Sowing each variety of seed in a different square makes harvesting and weeding easier.

Cut the flowers throughout the spring and summer to keep the plants blooming!

Gardening on a Shoestring by Alex Mitchel, published by Quarto, © 2016; quartoknows.com.

Flowers aren’t just beautiful—they can also send a message. “In the Victorian era and even long before that, flowers served as beautiful messengers that whispered what often could not be spoken aloud,” write Leigh Okies and Lisa McGuinness in their new book, Meaningful Bouquets. From anticipation and affection to forgiveness and friendship, a bouquet of flowers can help you speak to a family member or friend in a new way. “[In the Victorian era], they were the equivalent of clandestine text messages or notes of encouragement,” the authors write. Here are a few flower meanings and how you can combine them to create a beautiful message.

Remembrance

“When you want to commemorate an occasion or a special person, this combination of flowers comes together for a memorable impression,” the authors write. The bouquet doesn’t have to be large—combine the flowers in a vintage coffee or food can for extra effect. Whether the occasion is a birthday, holiday or anniversary, here are some of the flowers you can include and the meaning they convey:

• Pink carnations: I will never forget you
• Rosemary: Remembrance
• Oak leaf hydrangea: Calm
• Forget me nots: Remembrance
• Bluebell: Constancy

Crush on You

This bouquet can go to a significant other or another person you admire, such as your mom on Mother’s Day. “This arrangement is a lovely way to express your feelings for someone you find fascinating,” the authors write. “Give it to your crush or a friend to let them know they’ve been on your mind.” Include a “Thinking of You” card to tell them the meanings of the flowers in the bouquet:

• Orange roses and rosebuds: Fascination
• Maidenhair fern: Secrecy
• Rose hips: Love
• Daffodil: Admiration
• Honeysuckle: Devotion

Comfort

Sometimes it’s difficult to know how to give comfort to a friend or loved one when they’re having a hard time. A bouquet of flowers with their Victorian meanings is a steady reassurance of love and support. “Giving comfort and sympathy to others requires sensitivity and quiet reassurances,” the authors write. Here are a few flowers you can use to support others:

• Scarlet geranium leaves: Sympathy
• Dahlias: Dignity
• Glove amaranth: Unchangeable
• Peony: Bravery
• Goldenrod: Encouragement

For more ideas, including bouquets for celebration, luck and passionate love, get a copy of Meaningful Bouquets here.

Meaningful Bouquets by Leslie Jonath and Lisa McGuinnes, photography by Annabelle Breakey, published by Chronicle Books, © 2016; chroniclebooks.com.

It’s time for a gathering of girlfriends who enjoy the simple pleasures of reading a great book and having good conversation. Inspired by the scents and sights of old pages, this erudite event pays homage to the romanticism of the famed French novels of the 19th century and beyond.

Set the tone with an easy-to-create table runner fashioned from the pages of no-longer-needed paperback books. The covers were removed and the books were soaked in a tub filled with coffee until the pages were stained. The books were laid out in the sun to dry, and then the pages were carefully torn out and hot-glued by the corners in random fashion to create the long table runner.

A lush and breezy bouquet of pink roses and softly muted greenery brightens up the table and adds an almost sculptural beauty. At the end of the party, the hostess will dismantle the flower arrangement and each guest will receive a jar to fill and bring home as a memento of the day.

The French theme carries through to the food, set out buffet style for guests to serve themselves. French Limoges china with a delicate pattern of roses is party perfect and lends itself to accessorizing with antique glassware, vintage monogrammed napkins and silver flatware.

For the main course, simple bistro fare includes homemade Croque Madame sandwiches that are filling and easy to make. Pâtisserie including macarons and madeleines have been set out on charming plates atop boxes from trips to an iconic French pastry shop in Paris.

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A beach picnic can be more than sunblock and surfboards with some inspiration from the past.

An old-fashioned beach picnic is once again in vogue. Take a page from history and create a day you will remember forever. When life coasted at a slower pace, such outings were more commonplace. Make a beach picnic as romantic as you would when entertaining at home.

Here’s to flowing sundresses, large-brimmed straw hats, wet sandy toes, fresh flowers, seashells and sweets at your beach picnic.

Be Inspired

Start with something vintage as an inspiration piece; we used beach-themed postcards that have an old-fashioned sensibility and set our color theme for our beach picnic.

Make a Checklist for Your Beach Picnic

• Baskets for collecting shells
• Books
• Fresh flowers
• Lanterns and candles
• Mason jars
• Painting, coloring or writing supplies and journal
• Quilts
• Treats, fruit and lemonade
• Umbrella
• Vintage plates, cups and flatware
• Wagon for toting items

Vintage pails and a camera are thoughtful touches for a beach picnic. A flower frog moonlights as a pencil holder, encouraging guests to draw and write. Hunting for seashells is also encouraged with a tin basket and paper umbrellas.

Be inspired by Fourth of July treats and the colors of the American flag.

It is a day to celebrate American style. The Fourth of July is a holiday built around nostalgia, and traditions reign. There will always be red, white and blue; parades; fireflies caught in jars and the tastes of summer. We put a sweet spin on our celebration by creating Fourth of July treats: cupcakes donned with sparkly sugars in patriotic colors and star-shaped shortcakes livened up with fresh cream and berries.

For the setting, contributing editor Diane Sedo favors ruby glass on the table, which works with her Wilendur red rose tablecloth. The yard is fully mature by now, so green grass sets off the bright colors perfectly, and nothing says Independence Day better than buntings tied to a white picket fence. The scene beckons golden-haired dogs being chased by children in paper pirate hats.

Star Shortcake

Makes 6

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup unsalted butter, cold
3/4 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.
3. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
4. Stir in the milk with a fork until the mixture forms a ball.
5. Knead dough several times on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Roll out the dough to about 1/2-inch thickness and cut with a 3-inch star cutter.
6. Place on ungreased baking sheet and sprinkle with additional sugar. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

For the fruit filling: 1 cup blueberries and/or 1 cup raspberries mixed with 1 tablespoon sugar.

To assemble: Cut the slightly cooled shortcakes in half. Place some fresh cream (or whipped topping) on the bottom half of the shortcake. Add 1/3 cup of the fruit. Top with remaining shortcake. Garnish with a dollop of cream and fruit.