Patio

(From the Spanish: "Patio"= Back Garden or Back Yard) A patio garden is an outdoor garden space generally used for dining or recreation that often adjoins a residence and is typically paved. Specifically, it may refer to a roofless inner courtyard of the sort found in Spanish-style dwellings.

Patios are typically made of concrete or stone slabs laid over a firm base. This base is often formed of a layer of compacted hardcore (stone chips), a layer of sharp sand, and a layer of cement mortar. The firmness and stability of the base is essential to the robustness of the top layer of slabs - an infirm base will typically result in cracked slabs. Patios that hold a lot of weight, such as driveways, require stronger foundations than those that are designed for light use.

Patio gardening is often based around the use of large clay pots.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Patio".