Increasingly, as we spend more time outdoors and appreciate our garden environments more, garden furniture designs are changing. Instead of a uniform set of outdoor furniture, many people are choosing to mix and match, often covering their garden furniture with the same fabric as their indoor sofa or suit, or bringing the fabric of their curtains or drapes outdoors to feature in awnings or hammocks.
Those who enjoy modern furniture and clean lines can vary the uniformity of matching things by resisting predictable symmetry. If you want two trees to flank the doorway, choose two different trees, or have a tree on each side and then two wildly different plants in brightly contrasting pots in front of the trees. If you want a grouping of matching chairs on the patio, set them off-centre, and give them accents of contrasting colours.
Water features - from ponds to fountains - are common in today's gardens. The sound of falling water is soothing and relaxing, and it has the added benefit of buffering unwanted neighbourhood sounds. Tile work around pools or water features can add drama and playfulness, giving visual relief to large areas of concrete or stonework - this year Mexican and Greek tiles are very popular, with primary colours and dolphin, cockerel or jaguar figures appearing on them in strong primitive shapes.
Furniture too is appearing in citrus colours which add zest to plain white or brown garden seating, and colourful table settings are becoming commonplace, again the bright Mexican themes are popular and the blue and white Greek style crockery is becoming hard to find in shops because it's so popular.
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