The rest of the house is in a state of sleep, except for old Rory who never fails to haul his tired old bones off the rug to come over and greet me as I come downstairs. First job is get the kettle on, pop out to the pond to feed the fish and then start to prepare breakfast for the birds patiently queuing on the fence.

Breakfast for the birds is usually a couple of bruised apples chopped up and a generous dose of sunflower seeds and/or peanuts. By the time I have returned indoors the first diner has usually landed on the patio or feeder. At this time of year, however, unless the birds can safely access your garden pond easily it is good practice to put out a saucer of drinking water.

But it is not just the birds are out-of-doors eating and drinking. Hopefully it is we humans too. Last April, by that I mean April 2007, we must have eaten outdoors two or three times a week. With the benefit of hindsight, we made the right move as summer was largely a washout.
In anticipation of good times ahead it is time to set to work on getting the patio into shape.

To me, it is commonsense to feed the birds away from the main (human) dining area and I have slowly been shifting the feeders down towards the bottom of the garden where they are clear of the predations of our killer cat, easy to see by us, but with a little distance between the birds and our own sitting out area.

The starting point is, therefore, to give the main patio area a good cleaning before starting to fill up the pots. Most of the bulbs (except late tulips) have come to the end of their flowering cycle and so no longer earn their ground rent, and so they are clear candidates for eviction. I start by moving containers away from the main area and assessing each pot in turn.

Should I leave them be to complete their natural cycle or should they be tipped onto the flowering beds the contents being used to improve the soil, salvaging what bulbs I can?

It can be a bewildering moment, but I find the best course of action is deal with the biggest containers first as they will form the bones of any display. Stuff with a tropical feel gets pride of place near the seating area to create an atmosphere that reminds us of happy times in warmer, sunnier climes. Cordylines, phormium castor oil and "Chusan Palm" all fit the bill. Our own palm is now about 7ft. tall and so wifey will be moaning about it obscuring her view of the waterfall from the kitchen window.

For something completely different, try setting up an obelisk (iron-work shaped like the Eiffel Tower) in a large pot and planting it up with a couple of the dwarf (about 6ft. high) Raymond Evison clematis. Traditional clematis are for the wider garden and on the patio would soon take on the all-embracing characteristics of a triffid.

Mr Evison's clematis are different. He has bred true compact varieties which look simply stunning and form a wonderful role in the wall of flowers and foliage with which I surround our patio.

Once the big stuff is in place and freshened up with a new topping of compost or gravel, it is time to arrange the (slightly) smaller pots around them. In these I have lilies and calla lilies and taller fuchsias, perhaps tall daisy plants and, of course, big geraniums.
These all give height and structure and interest. It is, however, their smaller cousins, the bedding plants which are the real summer work horses.

The very name, bedding plant, is misleading and far better to represent their true worth would be the name "summer colour plants". Of course, you can "bed them out" in the main borders of the garden and I fill any gaps around the base of trees and shrubs in exactly that way. It is, however, in containers they excel.

Here, raised slightly off the ground, clear of the worst ravages of slugs and weed contamination they flourish and soon fill pots with colour. For shady areas choose busy lizzies, begonias and fuchsias, for sunny spots choose petunias, lobelia, "Snowland" daisies and marguerites, "Figaro" patio dahlias and salvia.

It is, however, the height of pots that allows you to get the most out of planting in containers. Upright bedding plants fill the centre of your containers, but it is around the edges that trailing plants come into their own. Trailing verbena, white bacopa, trailing lobelia and fuchsia provide cascades of flowers all summer and provide the patio with the very essence of an English summer come rain or come shine.

Finally, there is the lawn. While we are very patio-orientated in our gardens these days, the best gardens feature expanses of grass. Lawns with broad swathes of green combine beautifully with flowering trees and shrubs and look so very "English".

Anyway, there are sounds of stirrings elsewhere in the house, as the rest of the family emerge from their slumbers. Rory is stretching himself, getting ready for a hard day sleeping in the sun. I quite fancy the idea myself but with so many pots to plant up I think I can dream on.