DIY Garden Seating Ideas

Summer is the time to really get out there and enjoy your garden as well as just working in it. It is important to have somewhere wonderful to sit between doing all the jobs that need to be done and harvesting your own food. But when creating seating for your garden, it is important to remember that seating does not have to cost the earth – literally or figuratively speaking. Here are some DIY garden seating ideas that are kind to the planet as well as your wallet.


Pallet furniturePerfect Pallet Furniture


Many of us are now familiar with the many uses to which we can put old wooden pallets. These scrap wood pallets are perfect for creating a range of different types of furniture for use outside and inside your home. You can create seating areas as simple as a sturdy bench and as complex as an entire outside living room complete with sofa seating and pallet coffee table. Even if you only have basic DIY skills, you can use wooden pallets to create an outside seating area to suit you.




straw baleStraw Bale Seating


You can also make summer seating for your garden using straw bales. While these are a temporary solution if just left as they are, putting a wooden top on them and rendering the sides with clay can make a beautiful and sturdy seating area that can last. Cob walls could also be used to create a beautiful raised seating area in your garden.


Living Furniture


Another slower but arguably much cooler way to make outdoors furniture from wood is to grow living trees into certain forms to make a chair or a table. Shaping trees or sturdy shrubs to mould them into living furniture could be a wonderful way to add a touch of magic and a fairytale quality to your outdoors seating area.


HammockA Heavenly Hammock


For the ultimate snooze spot for a lazy summer's day, nothing can beat a hammock, simply strung between two trees. You don't even have to buy a hammock because you can make your own from old bed sheets, an old tarp or tent, or other sturdy old fabrics – a great way to recycle these items and keep them out of landfill.


Landscape Seating


One final idea for garden seating is to mould seating areas out of the soil in your garden. By landscaping your garden you can create soft mounds and hollows that are perfectly formed to provide a comfortable place to sit or to lie on a dry summer's day. You could cover these earthworks with grass or moss, but how about also considering hard-wearing herbs like thyme, which will smell divine when crushed and can survive a bit of squishing when you sit there every now and then.