Why You Can Improve Your Outdoor Space As Winter Approaches

As autumn deepens, with winter not far behind, it can be easy to feel as though these are the ‘dead’ months for the garden, with not much going on outside. But, in fact, there’s a great deal you can do to enhance your outdoor space at this time of year.

For example, you can have a good old tidy up so your garden is ready for spring, and improve the soil by adding nutrients – it’s also a good point in the year to prune deciduous plants while they are dormant. This can improve the look and health of these plants once the weather warms up again. And when it comes to planting, now is the season for installing bare-root species including fruit trees, rose bushes and hedges.

Equally, you could rearrange some elements so that the view from inside your home is more attractive. That might include, for example, moving pot displays or garden ornaments, or removing some of the lower branches from a tree.

It’s also a good time of year to take stock and plan ahead for next year – in a way, your garden is a blank canvas during the colder months, with fewer flowers and so on, so it’s a good opportunity to improve the space and make it your own.

Here are some ideas for doing just that Add a half-tree bench
A teak half-tree bench is an elegantly designed yet practical seating solution that uses space which may have previously been overlooked, while creating a beautiful shady spot where you can sit under a favourite tree (and make a lovely feature of it) and read or just enjoy being outside. These pieces come in varied sizes, have a curved seat and back. and are typically made up of two parts of a fully circular tree bench. It’s also often possible to order one so that it meets your own specifications.

You can seat a number of people comfortably, while half-tree benches suit many different settings aside from gardens, including parks and schools, as well as decking areas or patios.

A bench like this showcases superb craftmanship, and it could transform the way your garden looks. Go for premium-grade heartwood teak – it comes in a darker shade of golden yellow and is higher in natural oils than other varieties of this timber. That means you get superior resistance to the weather, decay, fungi and insects.

And, of course, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of teak outdoor furniture with a low-maintenance piece like this, including longevity and durability and resistance to moisture, not to mention the beautiful appearance of this gorgeous timber.

**Hire a landscape gardener**

Winter may not, on the face of it, seem like the ideal time of year to be taking on garden landscaping contractors – but there are a number of benefits in doing so. For a start, any landscaping job is likely to involve some excavation, which can be an issue if the sun is out and you want to be in your garden. That’s not so much the case in winter. Garden designers and landscapers are also more likely to have free appointments at this time of year. And the necessary materials may be more readily available as there is often less demand for them.

Finally, the cooler weather means the hard physical graft of garden landscaping won’t be taking place in a sweltering heatwave – while if there’s been rain, which is more common at the back end of the year, the ground can be softer to work.

So if you think this isn’t an ideal point at which to transform your outside space – think again.