Garden bench - siting

We all know that gardens should be enjoyed, but we rarely give much thought to how we enjoy them. Every year, garden centres are full of people purchasing chairs to ‘go with’ the crockery or tables that ‘look like’ the one that just appeared on Emmerdale or Footballers’ Wives or whatever. This is not the right way to go about things! Garden furniture should be chosen for comfort and put in places that allow garden users to relax and enjoy the garden around them.

As an example, benches should be located in an accessible location, sheltered, if possible, from the wind. Ideally, they should have some sort of screen to the rear of the seat, so people aren’t sitting with their backs to open space. It’s a fact that the most dominant person in a group will always sit with their back to the wall at a round table, while more subservient individuals end up with their backs facing the open room. This is because our primitive ancestors protected themselves against predators creeping up behind them by putting their backs against a cave wall or tree. We naturally do the same, so however pretty a seat looks in the middle of the lawn, nobody will feel comfortable there for long because the open space behind a person makes him or her feel nervous.

Seats should be recessed back from the main footpath route so that they do not become a hazard, this may mean laying a couple of extra paving slabs into a path to hold benches, rather than setting them on the path and making people squeeze round.

You can work with your own preference for sun or shade, setting your bench in the place that works best for you, but remember that visitors may have different preferences. If you are siting a bench under trees, try to avoid species that drop resin, sap or berries.

In positioning a seat, think about what it will stand on. Cast-iron seats generally have narrow legs and can sink into a lawn, for example. In fact seating on a lawn should always be very lightweight because modern mowers usually mean any seat has to moved every time the grass is cut.

Plant your favourite low shrubs or (my favourite!) alpine strawberries near your garden bench and you can either enjoy your favourite plant at close range, or harvest a few sweet berries to eat as you relax.

Garden bench collapsing photograph by Plumbum, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

 

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