August 25th, 2022 by Sarah Miles

A great patio can make or break a garden. It’s often the area that’s used for social gatherings or just making use of outdoor space as it’s usually the best surface for outdoor furniture so keeping it looking nice can make all the difference to it being used and maximised.

Here are a few ideas that can reinvent your patio from a tired, dirty-looking area to a focal point of the garden.

Give it a good clean up

Because it’s subject to all weather conditions as well as being walked on, played on, or even subject to other outdoor undertakings such as bike maintenance or even pet toileting, garden hard surfaces can start to look dirty and neglected. As well as general dirt and muck, it may be turning green, or have black spots. These are all common, and you may have found that giving them a scrub with some household cleaner doesn’t seem to make much difference, but they’re not things you have to live with.

The green patches you may be able to see are organic growths such as mould and algae. These thrive in damp, cold conditions. You can’t wash this away, but you can remove it if you use a mould and algae remover product. This will also give the patio a general clean as well. The best bit is, that all you have to do is apply it and let it work – you don’t even need to rinse!

If you have black spots on your patio that look a bit like ink spatters, this is not dirt, it’s black lichen and it does require a specialist product as it’s an organism that burrows down into the stone in order to feed on the minerals. A black spot remover makes short work of it as it uses an active ingredient to break the tendrils that extend below the surface and force them to lose their grip.

Once you have cleaned the patio, you might want to consider resealing it. Applying patio sealant gives it a weatherproof layer of protection and will keep it looking clean for longer.

5L Ultima XP Super Concentrate Patio Cleaner

Price: £16.96

Buy Now

Get rid of the weeds

If your patio is constructed from paving slabs or stones with gaps, you will no doubt be troubled by weeds growing through them. Pulling them up is both backbreaking and an exercise in futility as the very nature of weeds is their ability to grow like, err weeds. No sooner have you pulled them out than they will start growing again. It’s much better to break the cycle by killing the roots with weed killer. This weed killer is designed for patios and can be put down to effectively kills weeds without discolouring or damaging the stones.

5L Pro-Kleen Ultimate Black Spot Destroyer

Price: £29.95

Buy Now

Add some colour

A flat, empty area is not exactly inspiring but it’s the perfect surface for placing plant pots and garden adornments. You can create some real interest by positioning colourful pots of flowers and plants around the space and the beauty of pots is that you can move them around whenever you want to refresh the look. Go for uniformity with matching containers or colours or make a feature of the eclectic by curating a variety of colours, sizes, and shapes.

Injections of colour needn’t stop there either, why not paint or embellish the patio itself? You can buy outdoor stone paint suitable for patios in a wide range of colours. Options include painting the whole space, selected areas, or stencilling designs on to look like expensive floor tiles. If you do intend to do this, it’s even more important to give it a thorough clean-up first.

5L PatioSeal Invisible Weatherproof Patio Sealant

Price: £34.96

Buy Now

Create a social area

Your patio offers a real opportunity to create a space for hanging out, eating, drinking, socialising, soaking up the sun or all of the above. The flat, even surface is really the best place in the garden for furniture and combined with giving it a good clean-up and adding pots and adornments, as outlined above, you could create an amazing space. Why not treat yourself to some new garden furniture or add a colourful parasol? A patio heater is also a must if you enjoy putting the world to rights well into the summer evenings