July 21st, 2021 by Sarah Miles

Transform your garden from a place to store the bins to a beautiful extra room for your home

When we decide to renovate a room in our homes, we often spend hours poring over colour swatches, watching design shows, and creating Pinterest boards but when it comes to our gardens, many of us in the past have been guilty of buying a couple of cheap garden chairs and cutting the grass, and that’s about it.

In recent times though, a few things have happened to make us re-evaluate:

• We’ve spent more time at home
• We get warmer summers
• We know that outdoor socialising is safer
• Many of us now work from home much more
• For many, money saved on commuting and not going on holiday is now available for home projects

Isn’t it time, therefore, that we really ought to think about our outdoor spaces as what they really are: an additional room or our homes and an opportunity to express ourselves?

Our gardens are so much more than just a space for hanging our washing out on a sunny day; they give us the opportunity to relax, to entertain, to dine, and to connect with nature. These amazing spaces, therefore, start with garden furniture. Here’s why:

Garden furniture defines the style of the garden

Just as you would do with a room in your house, you want your design scheme for your garden to be cohesive and consistent. Garden furniture comes in many different styles: the French pavement café style of a bistro set, the minimalism of something sleek in metal and glass, or the country cottage feel of a rattan corner sofa set. Pick your aesthetic and allow your furniture to set the tone for all your other design features including planting and accessories.

Glamhaus Seychelles Outdoor Antique Blue Bistro Set

Price: £145.00

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Enjoy alfresco dining

Many of us consider eating outdoors in a Greek taverna or on a Mediterranean terrace a real highlight of our holidays abroad but we don’t have to reserve this for our travels. While we might not get the same weather as some of our European neighbours, we can get beautiful summer evenings in the UK and having a lovely garden dining table set enables us to take advantage of any good weather we get to dine alfresco, whether it’s a tapas feast or fish fingers and chips!

Reconnect with family and friends

The isolation of lockdowns over the last year or so has meant we have missed out on the human connections we probably all took for granted previously. Parties, barbecues, or informal get-togethers are lovely in the garden anyway in the summer but we also know that they’re much safer than indoor socialising so having some lovely garden furniture to allow us to chat, relax, dine, and entertain our friends and family is a really nice way to catch up and make up for any lost time.

Glamhaus Catalina Black Garden Table and Chair Set

Price: £199.99

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Appreciate nature and being outdoors

Mental health and well-being are now being recognised as being just as important as physical health and it’s been a testing time for all of us. There is significant evidence that being outside can lift mood, reduce anxiety, improve memory, and increase cognitive function. Your garden, therefore, could be instrumental in improving well-being and creating a real haven for you and your family. By having a place to relax outdoors – and a blanket on the ground will do but a lovely, comfortable chair, sofa or lounger will hit the spot better – you can really be kind to yourself and use the outdoors as a natural pick-me-up.

Glamhaus Palermo Garden Bench - Bridal Rose

Price: £169.99

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Create an outdoor office

Working from home has become the norm for many of us and it seems highly likely that this will be retained as a new way of working for the long term: one of the positives to come from the pandemic if you like the better work/life balance that this has given you. One of the great things about working from home is you can be flexible with where you work. You may already have a home office, it could be the spare room, or it may even be the kitchen table but some good weather, a garden table set, and a parasol (for shade) can be all you need to relocate to your ‘outdoor office’. All the benefits of the outdoors detailed in the previous point could make a really positive impact on your work so not only do you have a more pleasant working environment; your performance could be improved as well.