Where does our obsession with the patios come from

A.� The concept of the outside room may be fairly new-fangled but we Brits have really been going patio mad since the late sixties. Patio is a Spanish word for outside seating area and the concept started to catch on when the first ex-pat barbecue (also Spanish) converts brought al fresco (Italian) dining to these shores from America and Australia. Before that a covered area near the house, usually reserved for genteel afternoon tea, was better known as the verandah, a suitably colonial borrowing from Hindi.

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A.� That depends very much on your personal tastes and budget. The days when your choice was concrete slabs in either grey or brown are now long gone thanks to our current fervour for stylish gardens. These days you'll find all the major DIY chains and builders merchants offer a fairly wide range of colours and materials, some designed to look aged and retro, with varying levels of success.

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A.� There will have been plenty of DIY patios laid over this last Bank Holiday weekend and the chances are most of them will not have been thought out properly. It is not as simple as throwing a bed of concrete down and shoving the slabs on top.

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The most popular area for a patio is against the outside wall looking out over the rest of the garden, a wall that is liable to hold not only damp coursing but air bricks to ventilate timber floors.