Instead of creating a piece of nostalgia, you might like to adopt the idiom of another country. As travel becomes easier, people see more styles and long to capture their character at home.

Gardens of northern France have a distinctive mood that is close to the formal styles in British tradition. Set the scene with gravelled paths and border them with clipped box standards and pyramids and low box hedges.

Place a statue or ornament at the end of each vista. Fix painted shutters at the windows and set out matching café tables and folding chairs on a paved area.

Fill window boxes and pots with geraniums and find a place for a piece of French pottery. Install a stone trough for a centrepiece. Such a garden is far easier to lay out than an informal, rambling one, but it takes more time to maintain.

The mediterranean look
Whether Spanish, Italian or Provencal, the Mediterranean look appeals to those who yearn for roasting summers, where the garden is hot and sunny and the owner likes to sunbathe. You need a site facing south or west.

A seaside garden is ideal, as long as it is sheltered, because tender plants are easier to grow where hard frosts are rare, the light has a clearer quality – and the views are magnificent.

Forget the lawn and have instead small corners of paving, partially shaded by pergolas draped with wisteria and vines. Add the cooling sound of trickling water and pack in some decorative terracotta pots brimming with pelargoniums.

Lay terracotta tiles on the terrace and grow vines over the white walls. Dot amphorae (two-handled, narrow-necked jars) about, filled with trailing plants or left empty and sculptural.

A fig tree, sky blue plumbago (moved to a conservatory for the winter) and Convolvulus cneorum add to the southern atmosphere and culinary herbs with lavender, rosemary and cistus come into their own. Ceramic plaques make attractive wall features.

The Mediterranean look may surround a swimming pool, where flowers of clear blue and yellow work best. This is a tricky area to style, particularly if the pool is an insistent blue.

Stick with brightness, which suits an area of action. This is a good place to build a barbecue into the wall, for eating in the open air after a day of swimming and sunbathing.

Oriental harmony
A highly popular style is that of Japan, although most of the gardens seen in this country under that name bear little relation to the original. Rock, water and plants are the core features and should evoke the natural landscape.

Surface texture and subtle colouring contribute to their style and appeal as much as shape.

Make a restful oasis, planted with bamboo, other foliage plants and small-leaved evergreens, all set among drifts of gravel, pebbles and small boulders. Add a bonsai tree in a beautiful pot, a Buddha strategically placed or a stone lantern.

Plants to give the right mood include the angelica tree (Aralia elata), with large, deeply divided leaves, and its relative, Fatsia japonica. Clipped Sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera), grasses, ferns and mosses are appropriate.

A Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) adds autumn colour. The bamboo Nandina domestica and shrubby Pinus mugo – indeed all pines – add an Oriental air. Enhance it with azaleas clipped into hummocks.

In a Chinese garden, plants have significance beyond their visual appeal. Grow chrysanthemums for suggesting autumn, peonies for wealth and grace, magnolia, crab apple and laurel for wealth and contentment.

The bamboo is flexible yet strong; the peach brings fertility and longevity. Intersperse plantings with mosaics of pebbles or tiles that depict plants or animals.

Indian and Persian gardens can be suggested in your own plot. Such gardens are always formal, with cisterns of water as centrepieces and gently playing fountains along the length. Pots of pelargoniums stand symmetrically around the water.

A palm, cordyline or citrus tree in a tub helps to create the mood, although none of these is hardy unless placed in the most sheltered town garden. The only hardy palm is the Chusan palm (Trachycarpus fortunei).

Use precise, symmetrical plantings, perhaps in sunken beds with flowers at path height. Persian gardens are associated with roses, and the richness of all yellow roses has come from their Rosa foetida ‘Persians’, a double yellow old-fashioned shrub rose. Eastern styles and plants suit a small, enclosed town garden.

To the rescue bamboo cloches
Combine function and form in an Eastern-style garden with bamboo cloches. Place the cover over a plant for shelter from frost and wind. To give more protection, cover the cloche with horticultural fleece or newspaper held in place with clothespegs.

The woven dome lets rain through while creating a warmer microclimate for the plant.

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