Alternative garden seating – Have a DIY go at this!

We sell some truly gorgeous garden seating. Some of it doubles as garden storage, a clever solution as well as an attractive one. But how about alternative garden seating? What if you have some little corners and hidden places in the garden where you’d like to sit, areas where you can’t really fit a beautiful, big garden furniture set like the ones we sell?

Can you make garden seating yourself? How about re-using, recycling, and re-purposing? As it turns out, there’s all sorts of potential for low cost and free garden seats.

Our friends down in Devon have been busy with alternative garden seating. They’ve sent us some photos of the DIY garden seats they’ve made and found. Take a look at these and get inspired!

DIY pallet wood garden seats

Take one pallet. They’re incredibly solid things, build to carry enormous loads of heavy stuff to and fro’ on lorries, cranes, and fork lifts. If you’ve ever tried to de-construct a pallet you’ll know it’s incredibly hard work. The nails that keep them together have barbs like fish hooks, which make pulling them out of the wood quite a job.

Instead of trying to take a pallet to bits, our friends cut one in half and glued the two halves together, one on top of the other, with wood glue. Then they painted the finished mini-bench with sage green masonry paint – which works brilliantly on wood for some reason – and added butterfly decor using a rubber stamp and acrylic paints. A layer of tough exterior varnish finished things off nicely.

DIY garden seating made from an unwanted wooden ‘whatever’!

This bizarre wooden platform probably originated as something completely different. Our friends found it in an outbuilding, where it was being used as a platform for an old washing machine whose lead was otherwise too short to reach the socket. All they did was paint over the tatty red gloss paint with sage green masonry paint. It makes a nice garden bench. In summer they bring out cushions to make it more comfy.

Alternative garden seating – Railway sleepers and breezeblocks

This smart long wooden garden bench was made using a railway sleeper, a modern one costing £20. It’s standing on top of two breezeblocks that cost £1.20 each. No glue, no nails or anything, the sleeper is simply balanced on top of the blocks. It only took a short time for the blocks to go green with moss, which makes the whole thing look like it has been there for years. A total cost of £22.40 isn’t bad for a garden bench that sits four people comfortably.

Here’s another in the same style, this time made using chunks of trunk from a beech tree that fell down in the winter storms with a thick old plank of wood found in an outbuilding sitting on top. It cost nothing.

Small wooden garden bench from a car boot sale

This small garden bench in old pine came from a car boot sale, a snip at just £12. Painted sage green, it sits two in comfort. We like the vintage styling of this simple alternative garden seating.

A natural garden seat, part of the landscape

How about this? Instead of hedgerows, Devon Banks are the name of the game in this part of the country. The ancient Devon Banks enclosing the garden probably date back to the Domesday Book and beyond, and they provide a wonderful place to sit. It’s interesting to speculate how it turned out this way. But the natural platform that has developed is easily big enough to seat three people with legs dangling, giving lovely long views of the garden from a private, secluded spot.

Two long benches made from scaffolding planks and breezeblocks

Here’s another seriously easy-to-make pair of garden benches, this time long enough to seat eight people on each. Again our friends used a couple of breezeblocks for the ‘legs’ of the benches. They took literally ten minutes to set up, the planks were found in an outbuilding, and the blocks cost £1.25 a pop.

Two super-cheap park-style garden benches

Two pairs of cast iron bench arms might not seem very useful on their own. But when you go on Ebay and buy two sets of new wooden slats, it’s easy to make your own beautiful, old-school garden benches. In this case the slats cost £35 per bench and the decorative cast iron arms were £5 a pair from a car boot sale. All you need is tools and fixings and it’s a simple, fast job. Not bad for £40 per bench, less than you’d pay for a flimsy, cheap new garden centre bench in a garden centre or DIY store.

Found by the side of the road…

Our friends found three of these metal garden tables at the side of the road with a note attached saying ‘free garden tables – please take’. They did exactly that. Because they were a bit of a mess, the first job was to clean, sand and re-spray them.

Two years later the rust started taking over. Rather than spray them again, which is a nasty job, our friends are going to leave them to develop a rusty patina, going with the natural flow. A layer of rust protects the metal from further deterioration and the colour is actually really lovely. Once all the paint has all peeled off and the surfaces are fully rusted, they’ll look amazing. Very on-trend, bearing in mind the fashion for using things up and wearing them out!

Blending new and old, mixing luxury with low cost simplicity

Plenty of people double up their brand new quality garden furniture with interesting and unusual seating in secluded areas of the garden. It’s a great way to add extra interest while tapping into the trend for low-impact living, making the most of unwanted items and celebrating the power of human imagination.

If you’re busy saving up for some spectacularly smart outdoor furniture from our store, a DIY solution can keep you going while you wait.

Will you be getting all creative to make DIY alternative garden seating? If so we’d love to see photos.