The Long Summer Afternoon

There are some gardens that feel much bigger than they really are.

Not because of their dimensions, but because of the life they hold. A table waiting for supper. A chair pulled into the last patch of sunshine. Roses that have quietly climbed a little further than you remember. They become less an outdoor space than another room of the house, one that simply happens to have no ceiling.

It is a feeling we find in Martina Casonato’s London garden.

Readers of our Journal may remember Martina from our previous visit inside her Victorian home, where Venetian sensibilities sit easily alongside English architecture. Outside, that same gentle balance continues. Behind the house is a modest east-facing garden, enclosed by brick walls and anchored by a mature lime tree whose branches soften both the light and the sounds of the city beyond.

“It really is a little oasis,” she says.

During the warmer months, the patio doors stay open and daily life begins to drift outside. Martina will work from the antique marble table on the terrace, or occasionally from a deck chair, which must surely be the better option. Coffee turns into lunch, lunch gives way to the afternoon, and the line between house and garden becomes pleasingly irrelevant.

Perhaps that is one of summer’s real luxuries. Not ambitious plans or elaborate occasions, but the simple possibility of allowing the day to unfold without hurrying it along.

Martina loves to host, though she speaks about it in a way that feels refreshingly free of performance. The point is not to impress. It is to make people feel completely at home.

That begins long before anyone arrives.

She prepares as much as possible in advance and keeps the menu simple. Gazpacho improves after a night in the fridge. So does zucchine alla poverella, a southern Italian dish of courgettes, mint and vinegar. This leaves very little to do once friends appear, besides adding the finishing touches while her husband, Joe, makes sure everyone has a full glass and something to nibble.

“I think it really starts with the host feeling relaxed rather than rushing around,” she says.

It is such an obvious truth that we somehow still manage to forget it. The best gatherings are rarely remembered for the cleverest menu. More often, it is the smaller things that remain. Someone passing another bowl of olives. The particular friend who insists on helping, despite being told not to. Candles being lit almost absent-mindedly as the light begins to fade.

At Martina’s house, evenings often end with board games. This feels exactly right. There is a certain point in the night when everyone has eaten enough, conversation has loosened and a game becomes considerably more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Eden Wall-Mounted Terracotta Pot, Featured Left & Eden Terracotta Pot, Featured Right

The table itself follows the same relaxed approach.

Martina’s antique marble table is narrow, which discourages excessive styling and leaves room for what matters. A few small bud vases filled with roses from the garden. Plenty of candles once the sun goes down. Nothing too arranged or precious.

There is a useful lesson in this. A table does not need to be covered in things to feel special. Sometimes a handful of flowers, a good cloth and a plate of something delicious are quite enough.

As the day moves on, the garden begins to change character.

The far end, where the lime tree and garden room sit, catches the last of the afternoon sun. It is Martina’s favourite place to disappear with a book while the warmth lingers. On particularly balmy evenings, she and Joe set up a projector and screen in front of the garden room and turn the lawn into an outdoor cinema.

Handwoven Cotton Seat Cushion, Blue Stripe, Featured Left

There is something wonderfully hopeful about watching a film outside. It requires a small amount of effort and a larger amount of faith in the weather. When it works, it feels faintly magical. Blankets come out. Glasses are refilled. Nobody seems especially concerned about what time it is.

Comfort matters, of course, although Martina thinks of it less as luxury and more as invitation.

“Textiles soften the more utilitarian feel of garden furniture,” she says. “They bring colour, texture and personality, instantly making an outdoor space feel more inviting.”

She is particularly fond of stripes. They are classic without becoming solemn, practical without feeling dull, and they bring a little rhythm to a space almost effortlessly. A cushion on a bench, a cloth across a table, something soft behind your back once supper has gone on rather longer than planned.

Lighting, Martina believes, is just as important outside as it is indoors, yet it is often treated as an afterthought.

Inside the house, we instinctively understand the appeal of pools of light and softer corners. The same principle applies in the garden. Martina layers different sources throughout the space: wall lights across the patio, moveable spotlights trained on particular plants and fairy lights at the far end, where they add a low, romantic glow.

Her advice is pleasingly direct.

“Always choose warm lighting.”

Few things destroy an evening more efficiently than a cold white bulb.

Good garden lighting does more than help you see. It changes the mood and makes the space feel inhabited after dark. It gives everyone permission to stay outside for another drink, another story, another round of whatever board game has unexpectedly become fiercely competitive.

Asked to describe her perfect unhurried afternoon, Martina does not mention a beautifully laid table or a gathering of guests.

Instead, she imagines deadheading her roses, something she finds deeply therapeutic, before settling down on the grass or on her Ludlow bench with a good book and a gelato. If she is lucky, Minty, the neighbour’s cat, wanders over to keep her company. 

There is something reassuring about the modesty of that answer.

We often think of gardens as places that ask us to do more. More planting. More pruning. More improving. There is always another pot to fill or border to attend to.

Perhaps, every now and then, they ask for the opposite.

A little less.

A little more time outside.

A little more room for supper to become evening and evening to become night.

And a few more days that end exactly where they began, with the doors left open and no particular hurry to close them.