Aspirational Garden Purchases…

Monday, 07 February 2011

Winter can be a difficult time of year for us gardeners. Opportunities to get out in the garden are not hugely frequent and it’s easy to get in a slump and some winter blues. So, we need to be thinking about exciting things, shiny things and cool things. Dare we say we need to be thinking about expensive things. We’re taking about aspirational garden purchases or things we would dream of owning. The things we see in glossy magazines or on cool websites that tell us what we need in our lives right now. We know that many of these things are beyond our financial reach but it’s nice to dream if only for a little while. So without further ado we present you with some of the things that, if we had the means and the space we would love to own.

Working at Home

Our office is at home. Whilst we are out and about a lot, we still require an office at home to both facilitate the design of gardens but also for the day to day administration of our business. Now our office is not a bad office, in fact it’s quite a nice place to be but we still wish we had incorporated the space in the garden for one of Archipod’s stunning new custom built offices.

Image courtesy of Archipod

They come in two different sizes, 3 metre and 4 metre diameter and prices start from £15k excluding VAT.

Image courtesy of Archipod

Taking the inside out

One of the most talked about purchases we have seen recently has got to be the concrete chesterfield sofa by Gray Concrete. There’s no doubt that, as a focal point in a garden it’s a real head turner. The detailing is incredible down to the inclusion of a 50p concrete coin stuck down the back of its cushions. It’s remarkably comfortable too, so we’re told.

Image courtesy of Gray Concrete

Geodesic Domes

There aren’t many greenhouses that would generally be regarded as exciting. Don’t get me wrong now; sowing, nurturing and growing your own covered crops IS exciting, it’s just that greenhouses generally aren’t and incorporating a greenhouse into a garden normally involves some form of aesthetic compromise. I don’t think it should though, hence my love of the geodesic dome.

Image courtesy of Solardome

With a design that’s based on 1960’s NATO radar enclosures it is both robust and graceful and the manufacturers claim it has several benefits over more traditional greenhouses including more even heat distribution, better airflow and enhance wind and storm resistance. Prices start at £9.5K excluding VAT. Visit Solardome for more information.

Garden Art

Not many of us contemplate having art in our gardens which is something I find strange. Consider if you will that we will have seating, dining furniture, cooking equipment and even lighting and sound systems in our gardens as well as our houses does it not seem like a logical progression to have forms of artistic expression in the garden too. Whilst oil paintings and watercolours won’t fair too well in the UK climate there are an abundance of artists and sculptors creating art for use in your garden. Whether it’s using stone, wood or metals they can be a real statement in any garden.

Image courtesy of Steve James Sculptor

Deal in abstractions

Modern gardens have to be flexible. You can design a garden to allow comfortable seating for say four or six guests but what do you do if you occasionally have more than that number over. Do you rummage through the garage or shed to fish out some aged, rusty folding deck chairs which, in practice, are more lethal than they are comfortable necessitating that your guests have tetanus shots before sitting. Or worse still do you lay out the faded green plastic seats that you hung onto for this very reason. The trouble is you had no space in the shed to store them so they’ve sat behind the shed for twelve months and need to be jetwashed before they get near a human posterior. Jetwashing plastic chairs isn’t enjoyable. What you need is seating that not only gives you flexibility but that are also attractive pieces to have in the garden when they’re not being sat on.

Dutch Summer have released what they’ve called the BUX seat (above and below). A chesterfield pouf inspired by a box tree in a variety of finishes and colour combinations.

Image courtesy of Dutch Summer

Italian design house Pedrali have manufactured these stunning 17th Century inspired chairs in either black, white, smoke or transparent. Manufactured from injected polycarbonate they are suitable for use both inside and out and are very lovely indeed.

Image courtesy of Pedrali

So let your ambition over the ensuing weeks and months be to dream of what you could have in the garden as opposed to the ice-age we are living with just now. To quote the Marquis De Vauvenargues “The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success”

Thanks for reading.

All at Vialii