Where To Buy Your Garden Furniture
Quick, blink and we'll miss it - the sun is out. Let's be as British as we can be and bask in that 20 degree sunshine! We're going to need props AKA garden furniture.
It happens every year; after a few false starts Spring has sprung. In fact we seem to have skipped Spring temperatures and leaped straight into summer. If you’re anything like me you’ll have peered into your garden with huge trepidation and realised there is work to do. I don’t just mean gardening - we want to enjoy our outdoor spaces, have them as additional “rooms” in our houses. For that to happen we need furniture and after a detailed search for my own (more on that later, I learnt my lesson the hard way) I thought I’d share the good links I saved to send on to friends when they have the same, inevitable panic…
In this post we’ll cover the benefits of the different materials you can buy garden furniture in. Paid subscribers will then get my hit list with (if I may say so) some excellent finds.
I have just come back from California where the options are endless, but then I guess it’s warm there 330 days of the year… You have no idea how much I cursed under my breath in Target as they had the exact chairs I’d been searching for, for $45 each. Don’t even get me started on Serena and Lily’s options, here. And Castlery’s. And Williams and Sonoma’s. Topics like this so firmly on my petition to move to the Sunshine State.
Here in the UK garden furniture options feel sparse (unless you are very rich). Thanks to the cost of importation few American - or even European - brands bother to bring their stuff to us. Having conducted a few searches recently, turning over many a stone, for our my garden and for friends (including one time I “emergency” called a friend because the iron sun loungers she wanted were on eBay for 80% less than Neptune), I have put together a pretty long list of options.
I guess the first thing to consider with furniture is the material you’re going to go for. The four main options are; wood, iron, plastic and rattan. Here are my thoughts on each.
Wood - I bought a hard wood set and love it - but - they do take looking after. You’re going to need to store them inside or get a decent cover (which can be expensive). They also require sanding and re-staining each Spring. I wouldn’t change our choice, but I didn’t fully understand the level of upkeep.
Iron - The thing I love most about iron is that you can repaint and recolour whenever you fancy a change. Whilst the initial layout for new iron furniture can be expensive, it is the material that’ll last you the longest. There are at pitfalls; you’ll need to wax iron furniture occasionally and if they are allowed to get wet they may rust (which can stain the surface it is kept on). It is worth considering buying rubber footers for the legs of furniture to stop them directly touching your patio area. Do remember iron gets hot too - so check the temperature before you plonk yourself down during a heatwave.
Plastic - Plastic is far better than the days of basic green or white chairs like we had in the 90s. There are some good options these days and they are without a doubt the easiest to look after (no need for winter storage, but can discolour in extreme sunlight). Just remember that it’s not a heavy material. This can be great if you need to move them around, but also makes them more susceptible to tipping. If you have small children or elderly guests just bear that in mind.
Rattan/Bamboo/String - I say these aren’t my thing but there are some styles coming out I really like these days. I think if you have a boho or beach style home these can work really well. Just remember they need to be stored somewhere dry where animals/bugs can’t get in, and need to be waterproof sprayed every year. They also don’t do well when wet, so require a cover and/or moving them out of the bad weather. Essentially, they’re quite a lot of work.
Then I think it’s important to remember the style of your home, and emulate that outside. I think we Brits just don’t know how to do it very well - I feel the same about gardens as I do with bathrooms; so often you go to a lovely, warm home and then the bathroom is a grey, medicinal, sterile space. Nothing confuses me more than when a country-style home has modern garden furniture, or vice versa. No - if you want your garden to feel like an outdoor room of your house, furnish it the same way as the inside rooms. Rant over.
My Favourite Finds
I found hunting down garden furniture unreasonably stressful. A bit like sofa shopping, I was happy to spend on comfort but wanted to know it would last and would be very comfortable. I wish I’d found some of the things I’ve pulled up putting this post together! We have the Cox and Cox Turin sets (one from them and one via eBay - as eBay delivered more quickly!) and as much as I love them, I think it was a defeated purchase; I was sick of looking. Here are some alternatives
