Three easy steps to outdoor solitude

Step 1: Bamboo palms offer the elegance of bamboo canes with the dense tropical foliage that a screen demands. Place the palms -- including their plastic, dirt-filled containers -- into larger, decorative pots. Sit the palms side by side and you've got a screen. Keep bamboo palms and other houseplants and tropicals out of direct sunlight and bring them inside at the end of summer. Hardier plants -- such as shrub roses or a tall, bushy herb like Sweet Annie -- would work better in the garden.

Step 2: Fill a vase with cut flowers and herbs and place it on the table. Many aromatic and colorful plants won't grow well on a shady porch, so use cuttings there. A few long sprigs of rosemary add fragrance. Any combination from the garden or market works. If you've chosen a sunny spot, lilacs, a butterfly bush, honeysuckle -- anything that produces aromatic blooms -- can work planted in the ground or in a pot.

Step 3: Arrange a chair and table beside the screen and hang a wind chime nearby.

--The Washington Post