A place to sit
Gardens are great places for contemplating in, meaning you’re going to need a seat. Here’s what you need to consider.
As a nation obsessed with outdoor living, outdoor seating is big business. After all the hard work that goes into planting and tending a garden, you darn well want to enjoy it. Which is where seating comes in handy.
Whether it’s homemade or crafted from polypropylene or fibreglass, a wellplaced pew positioned among the shrubbery provides a means to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour.
Large or small gardens, your seating can range from formal to informal, DIY or custom-designed.
A simple understated stone or wood slab surrounded by minimalist planting might be all you need to create a tranquil and contemplative setting. Or a portion of a felled tree or a tree stump can make an excellent natural pedestal to sit upon.
There are kitset seats too. Many of these have built-in planters on each end of the bench, and the same concept can be achieved with a simple bench (any style) and a couple of free-standing planters placed on each end.
An unused child’s swing-set frame can be transformed into an adult swing by adding custom-built swings or a benchtype swing.
Hanging baskets of blooming flowers can be suspended from the swing frame to make you feel like you’re in the midst of the garden while seated on the swing.
In large gardens, seat walls help define smaller areas. Existing dry walls or rock gardens can be extended to form ledges to sit on, and the cracks and crevices on the risers can be planted with herbs and alpines.
Sedums (try Sedum spathulifolium ’Purpureum’), Lewisia hybrids, Delosperma (ice plants), Saxifraga (try Saxifraga ‘Rosea’), sempervivum and Chiastophyllum oppositifolium, are all plants that suit crevice gardening.
You can buy the seeds for the latter from Egmont Seeds. The plant forms low mounds of succulent leaves that bear upright stems of bright yellow flowers in late spring and early summer. In its natural habitat it grows in wet crevices and banks in shady mountain areas, so it’s ideal for wall crevices and rock gardens.
Of course, there is plenty of readymade garden furniture that is as goodlooking as it is practical, built with materials manufactured to withstand the rigours of life outdoors.
What looks like rattan may actually be an all-weather material, hand-woven with high-density polymer fibre for extreme durability and elegance.
Along with the modern outdoor furniture come modern cushions, with today’s selection of fabrics providing mildew and moisture resistance as well as a softness that did not previously exist in this type of material.
As well as such new fabrics are new cushion-filling foams that don’t hold water in the sponge-like way of traditional fillers.
Whichever seating arrangement you choose, placement is important.
Obviously, you want to put your seat somewhere that gives you a vista, or even fragrance.
If fragrance doesn’t exist, consider placing containers of fragrant plants, like stock, sweet peas, roses, or gardenias, nearby. You might also consider a fragrant backdrop of wisteria, climbing roses, clematis, or star jasmine ( Trachelospermum jasminoides).
Or you could make the seat itself fragrant by creating a living thyme seat. A simple wooden trough is all you need. Use potting mix with extra grit added in to ensure excellent drainage, and fill the trough right to the rim. Then plant it up with thyme. Trim the tops of the thyme once it’s planted to encourage the plants to spread out rather than up.
Eventually the thyme plants will form a mat which, when sat upon, will emit a lovely fragrance. You’ll probably want to sit on it when it’s dry though, or you’ll have to explain why you have that wet patch on your behind.