Guest Blog: Michelle From Garden and Chickens – Planning Garden Seating For Your Garden

Creating a garden to be proud of can take time, effort and patience.

Whilst gardening is a labour of love for many, and it’s surprising how little time hard-working gardeners take to sit back and relax in their own landscape or plot.

Sometimes, all that’s needed is a stylish garden bench positioned in just the right spot.

In this week’s guest blog, Michelle Akbashev, founder of popular Gardens and Chickens shares some of her tips for choosing garden benches and where to position them.

Michelle Akbashev, Gardens and Chickens

Michelle is a self-proclaimed plant nerd based in Atlanta, Georgia.  Her ever-popular Instagram account, Gardens and Chickens, is dedicated to making gardening easy for all.

Here’s Michelle’s tips for creating the perfect garden seating area for you and your family.

Garden benches give you and your family a place to sit, reflect, dream, and enjoy the garden that you’ve created or are in the process of creating.

Seating draws people into your garden and gives them a place to sit – whether or not they sit; it signals “here’s a place to relax.”

Often times, gardeners are so busy working in the garden… whether it’s tidying, weeding, rearranging, planting or inspecting – we forget to create spaces for ourselves and others that focus solely on enjoying what has already been created.

Don’t forget to plan garden seating for your garden

Below are key tips that I’ve found helpful when planning where to add seating in the garden.

Plan

Adding any sort of “hardscape” is an investment and one that’s often done with careful planning.

I’m personally a very visual planner and find it hard to solely rely on measurements in the garden to visualise new additions.

One powerful tool I’ve found for visualising benches/fountains/large planters is Haddonstone’s augmented reality app: Haddonstone Vision.

You can see how accurately the app represented the size in my garden space and helped me visualize what the Curved 52-inch Bench Seat would look like prior to purchasing.

Sunlight

Another important aspect to consider when planning to add in a bench is sunlight.

Placing a bench in a location that gets 8+ hours of unfiltered sunlight is a sure-fire way to ensure it’s never sat on.

Just like we plan our garden beds and plantings according to the sun, it’s important to consider hours of sunlight when thinking about seating and how you envision utilising the space.

I like to place seating in a partially/mostly shaded location – either under the canopy of mature trees or tucked away in a corner that receives protection from the sun from large evergreens.

Type of Seating and Durability

The last thing I’d recommend considering when planning to add garden seating in your garden is the durability of the material you’re selecting.

Frequently, the more durable the material – the more expensive the bench; but those are purchases that you only make once and often require very little maintenance from you, if any at all.

We’ve been building our home garden since 2015 and have purchased benches of all materials [stone, powder coated metal, wood].

In my experience, buying a bench of higher calibre material – though it requires larger upfront investment will serve you better in the future.

Add Timeless Stonework To Your Garden

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It’s time to sit back and relax

For hard working garden lovers, a stone garden seat adds the perfect finishing touch.

Garden furniture offers the ideal place for you to sit back, relax and enjoy your garden this springtime.

Here are our most popular designs:

Sit back and relax

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