Ditch your old traditional wood furniture, trusty barbecue and bowling green lawn to make way for carpets of blue, crystal rocking chairs and state-of-the-art cookers in your outside space of the future, which once used to be lovingly called a garden.

Modern garden carpets and outdoor rugs mingle with crystal-like rocking chairs in a riot of colours, oversized outdoor sofas and rubberised tables in the 24-hour garden theme at this year’s Grand Designs Live at Birmingham’s NEC.

The weird and wacky furniture is accompanied by what can only be described as altars to outdoor dining, featuring enormous barbecues equipped with in-built refrigerators underneath to keep all your beverages and food cold.

Out-of-this-world heating solutions, outdoor lighting and entertainment technology all feature at the heart of the exhibition in Grand Gardens, showing visitors how they can use their garden as an extra entertaining and living space all year round.

The core of the inspiration is The 24 Hour Garden, in which three interactive show gardens transform from day to night in minutes – an ‘outdoor living room’, complete with a ‘floating carpet’, the ‘tranquil escape’, with its unique boulder lounger and driftwood panelled walls, and the ‘contemporary kitchen garden for entertaining’, with its tea cup wall and bold dining set.

However, there’s a limit to extending the season – and no one’s going to be out there fine-dining in the pouring rain, agrees award-winning TV garden designer James Alexander-Sinclair, who will be discussing The 24 Hour Garden at this year’s show.

“The point of 24-hour gardening is not so much sitting in it, but looking at it. You can sit in your sitting room and power a switch and there you have it.”

Does he approve of outdoor garden carpet? There’s a large pause followed by a snigger.

“I’m not quite sure what the point of it is,” he concedes. “Outdoor carpet’s a marvellous idea if you like outdoor hoovering. But it’s part of the idea of the garden being an extra room to the house.”

However, he’s more open minded to new-fangled furniture making its way into the great outdoors.

“There’s something rather wonderful about taking bits of inside outside. I remember one lunch party where we just took all the furniture outside and put it on the lawn. It was weird, wonderful and exciting.”

Alexander-Sinclair comes up with somewhat more conventional ways of enjoying your garden all year round, such as placing winter-flowering plants with strong scents like Sarcococca confusa or winter-flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) near your front door.

“You will catch the scent as you fumble for your front door key – and that is using your garden in the winter.

“Lighting certainly extends the life of the garden as seasons change, so you are not just looking at plants but the effect of light on plants when planning your garden for the year.

“You can sit there with the fire blazing and if you light your garden properly you can see all the skeletons and shadows of your garden, which extends the life of your garden, as does a pond with a fountain with a light in it.”

In winter, clipped hedges such as yew and box look fantastic, even in frost.

“Anything clipped and architectural, with crisp lines, looks good in winter. In summer plants are diaphanous, fluffy and wafting about. It’s like people. In summer we all wander about in pretty, floaty things, but in winter we are wrapped up and keep everything as close as possible. A clipped evergreen hedge with frost on it is always a lovely thing to see.”

Will any of the gadgets he’s seen at this year’s show catch on and be the norm in the garden in 10 years’ time?

“No,” he sighs. “The whole essence of a gadget is that it’s a passing fad.”

But he does welcome innovative furniture which focuses on architectural, sculptural value rather then comfort.

“Because we live in this climate, we spend an awful lot more time looking at the garden furniture than sitting on it,” he says. “Therefore it’s important to make it as beautiful as you can possibly manage.”

Never a truer word spoken.

• Grand Designs Live Birmingham, NEC, October 7-9. Order tickets online at www.granddesignslive.com or call the booking hotline on 0844 854 1348

Best of the bunch – Aster

As all other perennials seem to have faded in the cooler weather, my lavender-blue Aster x frikartii ‘Monch’ have now come into their own, bringing a welcome burst of colour with their daisy-like flowers with yellow centres.

This particular variety is trouble-free and long-flowering, blooming from July to October, growing to around 90cm (3ft) tall. Others in the A. x frikartii group include ‘Wunder von Stafa’, which produces paler flowers which may need staking, and ‘Flora’s Delight’, a dwarf variety with lilac flowers and grey foliage.

Asters can be planted in summer to fill gaps left by early-flowering perennials, and look great in silver, grey or pastel schemes. For autumn colour they can be combined with hardy chrysanthemums or Japanese anemones, while other autumn foliage can provide a perfect foil to the mauve-pink flowers.

There are many other varieties of aster, such as A. novi-belgii, better known as Michaelmas daisies. All do well in sun or light shade in reasonable soil, but most need to be kept well watered in dry soils.

Good enough to eat – Success with spinach

It’s one of those veg which can be eaten hot or cold, wilted or creamed, lightly dressed or just served a la mode. And if you grow different varieties and protect it with cloches in the cooler months, you can be harvesting spinach virtually all year round.

However, perpetual spinach or spinach beet, not annual spinach, tends to do better because annual spinach tends to bolt in hot summers, whereas perpetual spinach and Swiss chard seldom do.

Perpetual spinach prefers a little shade and moist soil, although it will tolerate drier conditions than true (annual) spinach. It’s best sown once in spring and the leaves harvested regularly, then again in mid to late summer, which will produce plants to keep you in leaves all winter.

Spring sowings should be made indoors in modules, then planted outside when the soil is warming up. Alternatively, wait a few more weeks and sow direct outside, in rows 45cm (18in) apart, with 38cm (15in) between plants.

Be patient, because germination can take a few weeks, then thin out the seedlings. For salad leaves, grow perpetual spinach as a cut-and-come-again crop.

Spinach beet grows fast, producing large leaves which should be picked regularly when the outer ones reach 10-15cm, allowing the central leaves to continue growing. You can even cut the whole head around 2cm above soil level and the plant should re-sprout.

Three ways to… boost perennials

1. Trim back straggly plants now because they won’t survive winter unless they have tight growth at the crown.

2. If you have borderline-hardy perennials such as penstemon, leave them alone this month as the top growth will protect them in winter.

3. Move and divide early-flowering perennials if your soil is well drained. If not, wait until spring.

What to do this week

• As stakes and canes become free from cleared crops, remove them and clean and dry them before storing.
• Take cuttings of currants and gooseberries, selecting healthy wood from productive bushes.
• As the rate of grass growth diminishes, ease up on mowing the lawn. There’s still time to seed bare patches.
• Plant out spring-flowering annuals and biennials in their flowering positions to give the plants enough time to establish themselves before winter.
• Collect seeds from later-flowering plants and ensure they are dry before storing.
• Continue to plant spring-flowering bulbs including narcissi and hyacinths.
• Clematis cuttings propagated under glass in spring can now be planted out in their growing positions.
• Check dahlia supports are secure as the flowers will now be large and making the plants top-heavy.
• Protect ripening plums and cherries from birds and squirrels if you can.
• Discourage diseases such as grey mould by clearing away fallen flowers and leaves.
• Sow parsley and chervil in a sunny, well-drained position.
• Plant out new heather beds.
• Lift and divide overcrowded clumps of bearded irises, retaining only the best single rhizomes for replanting.
• Remove the growing tips of indoor jasmine and keep the plants in a bright position as the flower buds form. Water well and continue to feed fortnightly.