July Edit, Unhurried

Set a table outside

There is no need to call it entertaining. A table in the garden, a few people who genuinely like one another, and something cold in a decent glass: that is the whole of it in July. The trick is to spend your effort on the things people actually touch, the glassware, the linen, the one good jug, and to let the rest look pleasingly unbothered.

Start with our table and glassware, then let a proper pudding do the closing argument. Salcombe Dairy is the sort of thing you serve without apology.

Give something with a story

July is quietly stuffed with occasions: the weddings, the significant birthdays, the housewarmings of the people who finally moved. A present chosen from an independent maker does the one thing a department store cannot. It tells the person you thought about them for longer than the queue at the till took.

Our edit by purpose is the shortcut to a gift that lands, and every maker behind it is in the brand directory if you would rather browse the people before the presents.

Or do gloriously little

When there is honestly nothing on, which is rather the point of July, the pleasures get smaller and better. A book you have been saving. A bath at an unreasonable hour. A candle lit for no guests whatsoever. None of it is productive, and that is precisely why it counts.

Go & See

And for the days you do fancy leaving the house, three things worth the trouble this month.

A lavender field, at full tilt. July is the one month they are entirely purple, and standing in one is far more affecting than that sounds on paper. Find your nearest and go on a weekday if you can.

An open-air screening or a garden concert. Something under the sky while the evenings are still generous. Bring a blanket, lower your expectations of the wine, raise them of the company.

The sea. Cold, bracing, and worth every second of the flinch. You will complain going in and be insufferably smug for the rest of the day.

The whole edit, and the makers who made it, live in our brand directory. Discover them by where they are, or by what they stand for. July is long. Spend it well.

Grab an iced tea and have a peek at few of our new makers with the perfect ourdoor accessories.

• Casa by Josephine Jenno — hand-painted tableware and handwoven rattan for the table you set outside.
• Savage Works — rusty steel flowers and plant supports, hand-forged in the UK for a summer border.
• Moi Mili — cotton teepee tents, sturdy enough for the odd dragon invasion, pitched happily on the lawn.