When placing a seat or bench in your landscape, “Create a sense of security around your bench,” Julie Moir Messervy writes in Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love(Taunton Press, 2009, page 161). She recommends creating a feeling of safe enclosure by placing a bench in front of a wall or hedge, or planting large shrubs or tall perennials or grasses behind it. An arbor or trellis structure gives the impression of shelter without blocking views. “The backdrop behind the seat serves to create the security and seclusion of a harbor and allows you to forget the outside world as you daydream there awhile.”
The photo above is from Messervy’s Landscaping Ideas That Work (Taunton Press, 2013), page 202. Design: Weatherend Estate Furniture. Photo: Brian Vanden Brink.
