Aluminium Garden FurnitureGarden Furniture Design

Anybody with even the faintest trace of Norse or Saxon blood surely cannot help but feel drawn to this exceptional piece of garden furniture! If you’ve been reading this blog regularly (why wouldn’t you, after all?), you’ll know that I love hardy, old-fashioned garden furniture as well as modern and contemporary designs – making this a particular favourite of mine.

You see, where many people use their gardens for playing with the children or sunbathing, I tend to use mine for feasting. This is easier said than done with normal garden furniture, which is usually too small to accommodate a feast and, on the occasions when I put multiple tables together, it starts to lack that bustling feel. This old-style table, complete with long benches, looks like it has been lifted straight out of Viking drinking hall – the perfect piece of garden furniture to compliment a feasting atmosphere! Behold – it is even extra-supported and has thick legs to accommodate the inevitable table-top dancing and/or fighting! All it really needs is a throne at either end – the feast master must maintain control!

I accept that these may not strictly class as garden furniture in this picture, but I think these crazy jellyfish-like stools would make a great addition to most modern or contemporary garden. Alright so they’re probably not as comfortable as a deck chair and you almost certainly won’t fall asleep on one, as you might in a hammock – but they certainly are a cool way to share a glass of wine in the evening, or chill out while you throw a ball for the dog.

In my opinion, this kind of garden furniture will either look great, or totally out of place depending on the type of garden you have. Clean-cut modern gardens may well benefit from the addition of contemporary furnishings like these, where traditional gardens may only be marred by their presence. Of course, this is by no means a hard and fast rule; my garden is exceptionally traditional and filled with rustic garden furniture, yet I love the juxtaposition of placing crazy little statues and pieces of art around the place – it makes it like my very own Wonderland. Except much more manly of course… In the name of experimentation, I urge you all to buy something strange and put it somewhere in your garden. Go on, go crazy – you only live once (apparently).

We all remember the recent expenses scandal; the disgusting misuse of public money by the people we are supposed to be able to trust.  Well, according to Sir Thomas Legg’s new insights into MPs’ spending; garden furniture is amongst one of the many things MPs claimed for in their Additional Cost Allowance – designed to reimburse them for the costs of running a second home.  According to the Department of Finance and Administration’s Green Book, these expenses must be “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” incurred to enable the MP to stay away from their main home for a night.

You don’t need to be a professional to realise patio furnishings are most definitely not a necessity when it comes to staying away from home for a night.  Not unless you are a tramp anyway – in which case garden furniture is probably your main home in the first place and you’d be lucky to find yourself running the country.  It may seem like a silly point to make, but think about it; there are thousands of people who can’t afford a house, yet MPs were claiming back money they spent putting garden furniture in the gardens of their extra houses!  Houses they are only allowed to own so they can make it to parliament and such other meetings of the damned!  Why are we not in the streets right now, overthrowing these people?!

Carved from single pieces of wood (I’m not sure which type of wood, but I don’t think it really matters), these huge hands support a wooden bench upon which even a King would be proud to perch his posterior. Potentially meant to inspire a feeling of being supported by Mother Earth (suitably, since somebody has had to kill quite a lot of tree to make it), this bench is without a doubt one of the most fascinating pieces of garden furniture I’ve seen. It’s sad to think that it is placed in a public place, where vandals will no doubt desecrate it; it should be immediately purchased by an investor and put it amongst a copse of trees in a classy park. Everybody knows vandals hate thickets.

Although some may question the point of it, I like this piece of garden furniture. Sure the oversized supports may obscure your view of the surrounding scenery, but this is about as close as you’re ever going to get to the feeling of being at God’s right (or left) hand. Perhaps they come alive at night and protect otherwise feckless tramps…

The garden furniture market made up 67% of the £549,000,000 industry of garden furniture, barbeque and accessories, according to a report from AMA Research. Worth around £366,000,000 (even in this country of diabolic weather), the garden furniture industry continues to boom and, if predictions are correct, it’s going to keep expanding for at least the next 5 years! Let’s hope the weather holds up…

With the market’s value expected to reach a around £700,000,000 by 2015, it is no wonder people are starting to question why exactly the world of patio furnishings continues to grow in a time of economic recession. One potential contributing factor for this increased interest becomes apparent when we consider the history of the market; the last boom in the garden furniture market was about a decade ago – just long ago enough to mean this target audience might be considering replacing their aging furnishings! Combined with the recent surge in the popularity of al fresco dining and the financial advantages to spending weekends at in the garden with a barbeque – it suddenly doesn’t seem so strange that the market is back on the rise!

The impact the boom will have on consumers is hard to tell; although one would assume prices would drop, there has been a definite increase in the demand for high-quality garden furniture over the cheaper kind. This is possibly because people consider it a more long-term investment now holidays are getting harder to afford. So we could see a decrease in the amount of cheap garden furniture available and a rise in high quality and bespoke furnishings…which sounds good to me!