A Subtle Shift

We've worked on this somewhat hellish half acre for five years. We aren't as young as we used to be, but we've made great progress. Still, we have a long way to go.  Every day, we "walk the garden" to see what's changed. We sit on our lovely screened porch, my happy place, and look out over the yard. But yesterday, something changed. It was a little thing, a subtle thing, but it made such a large difference.

On Saturday, I took a trip to Behnke's nursery and garden center to see if I could locate some perennials I wanted. We plan to rework our perennial border this fall, and I wanted some more plants. I found some I was looking for, substitutes for others, and on some, I came up empty handed. After lunch, I hit the jackpot at River Hill Garden Center with several half price plants. I'm still missing a few I want, but I'll just plant pots where I plan for them to go. Certainly I'll locate them in the spring. But I digress (again - seems like I do it all the time).

While I was at Behnke's, I noticed they had all their furniture and accessories priced at 40% off.  I sat down in a chair I liked, and found it comfortable. When I inquired if there were more, I was told there was one more. Perfect. I needed a pair. I took the availability of two as a sign and bought them. Yesterday, Garden Man assembled them and plunked them down in the garden. They aren't where they will end up, they were just plopped. But what a difference! I had no idea the introduction of two chairs into the garden would make such a difference.

I used to stand at the glass doors or on the screened porch and look down on the garden and enjoy the view. Now, when I look down, the garden says "Come. Come out here. Come sit."  And now that I have chairs, I'll probably do just that. While it's lovely to look down upon a garden, I think it might be much better to sit in the middle of it.

Comments

[Pam]

Yes, definitely a lovely addition. Sometimes I find it hard to SIT in my garden because I can see the errant weed or two and just have to get up and get to work.

[Eric In Rockville]

Garden furniture can be such an important element in any garden design, as you've discovered. They function as "come hither" devices to entice people to enter or linger in a garden, and they are also decorative/architectual elements of the garden. When I first designed my garden, I placed seating too close to the sidewalk (I live a block from the subway in Montgomery county, Maryland, outside of Washington DC), and the placements brought unwanted strangers into my garden, often at odd hours (my garden is not fenced and it would be impractical to do so. So, early on I had to rethink the garden design and move the seating around to where it's not so enticing from the public street views, but is enticing from the house when viewed from the windows or from an internal, already in the garden point-of-view. Color is also a huge factor - the careful placement, of, say, one bright red adirondack chair can totally transform the appeal of a corner of one's garden. Some of my outdoor seating I use, and other bits are there merely as visual design elements.