How to host the perfect summer party with the least amount of effort
With the arrival of balmy weather, summer-party season is in full swing; and there’s no better way to spend a sunny afternoon than socialising outside with family and friends. Part of the point of a garden party is that it should be relaxed and informal, giving the hosts more time to enjoy it. But while a laid-back affair can be short on fuss, it needn’t be short on style. The question is how to add that wow factor to turn a simple party into a memorable occasion, without spending hours on party prep.
The television presenter and entrepreneur Laura Jackson is a master of the art of throwing a good party, having written a book on the subject, The Art of Hosting, and recently launched a how-to series on Instagram of the same name, where she shares her hosting tips and recipe ideas.
With her own homeware company, Glassette, to run, and three small children at home, Jackson doesn’t have the time or the bandwidth to spend days planning for a party; yet the weekend lunches and barbecues she hosts and posts on her feed, @iamlaurajackson, look effortlessly stylish and perfectly put together. “There’s so much in life that passes us by and we don’t really pause; I do like to celebrate the little things, and create moments,” she says. Here’s how she does it.
Start with a theme
“I think there always has to be some intent or purpose to what you’re doing, whether it’s just a casual summer barbecue to see friends, or a birthday or special occasion,” says Jackson. “One way to do that is to have a theme; I do think there’s something a bit fun about that. I’m not a big fancy dress person so I guess this is my way of theming an occasion.”
Starting with a theme can help you to make decisions about what to serve, and how to style your party. It could be as simple as deciding on the type of food you want to cook, and taking it from there: for a friend’s birthday dinner, for instance, Jackson created a home trattoria, with a menu of Italian food and drinks, a soundtrack of Italian music, and trattoria-style gingham tablecloths. For a Mexican celebration, she strung up strings of brightly coloured Mexican paper garlands around the garden.
For the occasion pictured here, she has put together two contrasting table looks: one at her outside table in hot pink and red, which pops against the greenery in the garden; the other for the table in her orangery-style kitchen, in elegant white, silver and green.
The outdoor table has a pink vintage tablecloth with red napkins, pale green plates, silver cutlery, and dark red dahlias. Inside, the white table is covered with an embroidered tablecloth and set with clear glass plates, bamboo-handled cutlery, vintage silver serveware and candlesticks, and a mix of carnations and green chrysanthemums.
Easy ways to give your table wow factor
To put a fun, modern twist on table styling, Jackson has dispensed with large floral arrangements and mixed fruit and vegetables with her flowers. On her outdoor table, she stuck dahlia stems into tomatoes, so that the tomatoes effectively act as vases for the flowers. For the centrepiece, she filled a simple white bowl with a fan of deep pink radicchio leaves and a handful of dahlias at different heights, held in place using a flower frog (a small disc of metal spikes that can be placed into the bottom of a vase or dish to keep flowers standing upright).
For her indoor table, she stuck carnations into green tomatoes, and made simple floral arrangements in vintage silver ice cream bowls, again using flower frogs. The centrepiece here is a glass bowl filled with a mix of potted salad leaves and chrysanthemums; she then threaded a pack of green grapes onto floristry wire, which she draped over the table like a string of beads. Broad bean pods scattered down the middle of the table make a surprisingly stylish finishing touch.
Simple, cost-effective styling tips
Setting two separate tables with different colour schemes is a smart solution when you need to seat more people than normal and don’t have an endless supply of matching tableware. However, says Jackson, “I also think there’s something nice about it being a bit mix-and-match. I like the idea that when there’s way more people than you’d usually have, it doesn’t need to all look the same – you borrow your neighbours’ chairs and make it work. I think there’s something really nice about that.”
She has previously styled long tables with lengths of plain fabric in different colours, bought from a cloth shop – a much cheaper solution than tablecloths. She also looks out for vintage bed linen to use as tablecloths: “I’ve seen massive bed sheets in France for €5; you could buy one of those, get some dye in any colour you like and just shove it in the washing machine.”
To keep things simple, paper tablecloths clipped down with wind clips are also a cost and time-saving solution: “If you’re doing a lunch and it’s that kind of style, it looks really nice to clip brown paper over the top of a paper tablecloth,” Jackson suggests. “I’ve done tables like that before, where people have written messages on the paper, which is nice, and it helps to keep kids occupied.”
Step by step: three ways to fold napkins
If your table is looking a little flat and boring, Laura’s tip is to get creative with your napkins – use napkins in a bright colour or pattern, and fold them in an interesting way. Here are three of her favourite techniques.
1. The hangover
The ultimate in easy chic: simply place the dinner plate first, then fold the napkin into a long rectangle and place it on top of the plate, so that it drapes down over the edge and down the side of the table; then place a side plate on top to hold it in place – or, if you’re not using side plates, a piece of fruit such as a lemon, an orange or a peach.
2. The knot
3. The fan
How to style a simple floral arrangement
Take a small dish, such as this vintage silver ice cream bowl, and stick a flower frog to the bottom with floristry tack. Jackson has used carnations with a single large chrysanthemum as the focal flower. Decide what height you want the tallest carnation to be, cut it to size, and insert it into the centre of the flower frog. Add a second carnation at a slightly shorter height. Cut the chrysanthemum stem quite short, and add the flower to the side. Fill in with carnations with the stems cut short so that they cluster around the rim of the dish.
Extra touches to decorate the garden
Laura’s outdoor dining table is on the cobbled terrace outside her kitchen, surrounded by large pots filled with greenery – natural decoration, which instantly creates an atmosphere and makes the table an inviting place to be. The pergola helps to create a sense of place, and is twined with festoon lights that come to life when the sun goes down (a gazebo, draped with lights, would have a similar effect).
“One time we put tea lights in jam jars, put wire around them and hung them on the trees, which looked really nice,” she says. “I love the thought of doing that and then painting the jam jars a different colour, maybe a lime green or a light yellow, and hanging them all around the garden.”
Go-to dishes to feed a crowd
Cooking for a large group can be a daunting prospect. To keep it simple, Jackson opts for sharing dishes, rather than individual plates. “I would never really do a three-course sit-down thing any more,” she says. “I do as much as I can in advance so that I’m not spending all my time cooking when friends are here. I’ll normally start with something small that people can have with a drink when they arrive as no one wants to drink on an empty stomach – crudites are always a winner, and I might do some cheese straws, crostini and bowls of olives. Then I’ll do big sharing plates of food for the main course, so I’ll think about what three or four dishes I can do in abundance: when you’re cooking for more people, it works out a bit cheaper that way too, because you’re cooking just three or four big dishes.”
Her go-to dishes will always involve a huge stack of potatoes, served on a large dish or platter and piled on top of a dip or sauce, such as harissa yoghurt, tzatziki or hummus. “I’ll also do a big green salad with lots of fresh herbs and a super-easy vinaigrette, sausages, meat or fish cooked on the barbecue, and loads of barbecued vegetables drizzled with some really nice olive oil, with fresh herbs and nuts on top.
“I love using cumin seeds, coriander seeds and fennel seeds, and if we’re doing a barbecue I’ll barbecue some lemons and squeeze them over everything. I’m always thinking about ways to layer flavour that are minimal mess and minimal fuss, but add a big impact to the end result.”
Her current favourite dessert is a chocolate mousse, served on a big sharing dish or in individual ramekins: “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like chocolate mousse, and it’s so easy to do: you can make it with three ingredients that you can get from the corner shop – chocolate, eggs and sugar – and you don’t need much equipment. I love to serve mine with frozen cherries, just because I’ve always got a bag of frozen cherries in the freezer, and some mascarpone, creme fraiche or yoghurt.”
Crowd-pleasing drinks to keep guests topped up (without getting flustered)
“There’s always an overwhelm when you invite people round, so I try not to do anything that’s going to cause too much stress,” says Jackson. “I usually do some sort of paloma, with tequila, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice and sparkling water; you could mix up the tequila and juice in advance, and pimp it up by preparing glasses with salted rims and a slice of grapefruit as a decoration on the side.”
For a super-simple drink recipe, she suggests chopping up peaches and apricots and putting them into a jug with ice, then pouring in a bottle of wine, to make a variation on a white wine sangria.
To encourage guests to help themselves to drinks, set up a drinks table with an ice bucket, bottles and glasses, and put jugs of water and non-alcoholic drinks on the table. “I normally set up a drinks station on a corner of the kitchen island, with a big old ice bucket that I found at a vintage fair,” says Jackson, “but it’s a good idea to have a drinks table in the garden so that people aren’t standing over you while you’re cooking.”
Glassette: glassette.com