A drive relaid outside gate is patchy (10)
I believe the answer is:
variegated
'patchy' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are adjectives. Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'a drive relaid outside gate' is the wordplay.
'relaid' is an anagram indicator (letters laid again).
'outside' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters go outside others).
'a'+'drive'='adrive'
'adrive' is an anagram of 'varied'.
'varied' placed around 'gate' is 'VARIEGATED'.
'is' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for variegated that I've seen before include "Showing mixed colours" , "With coloured patches" .)