Garden bench – fresh ideas

Okay, so you don’t fancy anything you’ve seen elsewhere – the dozens of examples in garden centres and magazines leave you cold. You want something different for your garden? Fear not, there are many solutions!

What about a swing seat? Not exactly unusual, you might say, but if you build an arbour-style frame to support the swing you’ve got a wonderful seat crossed with an arbour and you’ve brought the colour and fragrance of blooming plants to the calming nature of the swing seat to create a tranquil retreat.

Any tree can have a surrounding bench, as long as you take care when planning the design not to damage the root system with supports or drill into the tree. Consider adding a path to the tree to lead visitors to the bench and if you have it, make sure you tie the bench in with the decking. Avoid choosing trees that shed fruit and remember that few trees are really round, so if you want to create a round bench, you need to work well away from the trunk so that it doesn’t look as if one thing or the other is misshapen.

Planters come in a range of styles so why not build a raised bed that is designed to look like a stone wall and doubles as extra seating in the garden? Such a planter has the timeless look of a stone wall, topped off with flagstones especially when filled with low-maintenance plants like alpines or houseleeks.

Buy a bog standard concrete bench but don’t be content with that, either tile it with exotic tiles you’ve picked up on your holidays, or go to a tile shop, buy a wild selection of colours and styles and smash them up, then make them into a mosaic top for your bench!

Garden bench unusual photograph by byrdiegyrl, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

 

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