When I see an excellent, smooth lawn composed of bents and fescues (the principal grasses in your luxury-grade green carpet), I have an irreverent desire to peel off my shoes and socks and to feel the soft, cooling blades under my toes. Needless to say, such annoyingly fey behaviour is not allowed in the better gardens opened to the public, where the lawn serves the dignified purpose of making a calming counterpoint to the kerfuffle of busy borders.
But anything goes in the privacy of your own back yard. And in many gardens, not enough use is made of the lawn, a great blank canvas for all kinds of summer fun - for people both great and small. Croquet, for instance, is a splendidly cut-throat, devious game for two to four players. In this country, it is often associated with elite types drinking Pimms and grazing on crustfree cucumber sandwiches. Don't be put off by this: it works equally well when fuelled by beer and peanuts, or soft drinks and crisps.
The poshest croquet sets are made by the British company, Jaques, according to a friend who knows about these things (and who probably sips Pimms when she plays). Elvery's in Dublin stock a number of Jaques's kits: you'll pay more than £600 for the deluxe model, but cheaper ones are available for £225 and £350. Powerscourt Garden Pavilion, on the grounds of the estate in Enniskerry, stocks croquet equipment by another British maker, Townsend, costing £120, £148 and £350, depending on the quality.
The balls in both the Jaques and Townsend products are made of a hardwearing synthetic material, which probably gives them greater longevity - but I wonder if you get that pithy "clack!" sound when mallet meets ball? An inexpensive set with real wooden, clacking balls, is available from Windrush Mill, the mail-order division of Past Times, and costs £75 in the UK (plus postage). It can also be ordered through the Past Times shop in Dublin, where you pay the same amount in Irish pounds.
Past Times and Windrush Mill also supply quoits (£24.99), a game of hoops and pegs; Lord Lovell's ninepins (£89.50), where the ball hangs from a tree, rather than being rolled along the ground; and wooden-balled petanque (£12.99), a form of boules. Heavier-duty boules, with chrome steel balls, are available from Elvery's (£49.99), and from the Garden Room at Powerscourt House in Enniskerry (available from July, about £30).
The English cousin of the French boules is bowls. The former is played with completely spherical balls, while the latter employs slightly flattened balls. These can be bought at Powerscourt Garden Pavilion (£69), which is a separate business unrelated to the Garden Room at Powerscourt House. Both games require super-smooth, weed-free turf so that the balls can roll and curve with fiendish precision. The sad fact is that if someone in your life has lavished enough care on the lawn to bring it to the necessary green-baize texture, they'll hardly welcome your clomping around on it with your boules - or your bowls. So please, practise soft-shod, delicate footsteps during these languid-looking, elegant games.
If you're a bit of a galumpher, then keep to rougher, person-proof grass, and consider badminton. Decent rackets cost only about £20 apiece, and a shuttlecock is 60 pence. A net costs £24.99 at Elvery's, "but you can use a piece of string and a couple of teatowels instead," is the helpful suggestion from one of the sales staff.
If all of this pirouetting and cantering to and fro makes you weary, then, really, it's time to hang yourself up in a hammock. Jolly, multicoloured, striped, cotton hammocks cost £19.95 in the Garden Room at Powerscourt House. Meadows & Byrne (Bunratty, Cork, Dun Laoghaire, Galway) have a more sober affair in dark-green canvas for £50. A metal frame costs £99, while wooden A-frame supports (you need two, unless you have a hefty hammock-bearing tree or wall) are £25 each.
A Hatteras rope hammock from North Carolina is the hammock in the US. Grimes & Co sell them in their Dublin shop (£145), and by mail order (postage is extra). A bottle-green, heavy-gauge, tubular steel frame costs £155. Curiously, our own Hattaras hammock (and other hammocks I've met in my time) has a habit of ejecting the occupant if the bodyweight is not evenly distributed. The trick is to gingerly place the biggest part of your anatomy (that is, your bottom) in the centre first, gently swing up your legs and recline. There's no better way to pass the day.
Elvery's, 19 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2; tel: 01-6791555. Grimes & Co, 4 South George's Street, Dublin 2; tel: 01-6675627. Meadows & Byrne, Bunratty, Co Clare, tel: 061-364321; Academy Street, Cork, tel: 021-272324; Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin; tel: 01-2804554; Lower Abbeygate Street, Galway, tel: 091-567776. Past Times, 14 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2; tel: 01-6717477. Powerscourt Garden Pavilion, Powerscourt, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, tel: 01-2046014. Powerscourt Garden Room, Powerscourt House, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow; tel: 012046066. Windrush Mill, Witney, Oxford, OX8 6BH, England; tel: 0044-1993-770456.
Jane Powers can be contacted at: jpowers@irish-times.ie