You wouldn't face your sofa towards a wall, so why do it with garden seating?
Imagine putting a chair or sofa in your sitting room facing a corner, so that the view from it was a tangle of cables behind the television, or the dog's unlovely, unmade bed, or a blank wall, inches away. No. We all arrange our seating with great care, creating convivial spaces, or cosy niches for reading or contemplation, or vantage points with views out the window (or into the television).
So why is it that the same people who have placed their furniture inside with thought and precision often lose their sense when it comes to outdoor seating? Well, I can't answer that, but I certainly find myself asking it a lot. For instance, in a rather grand garden in the southeast recently, a friend and I spent much of our seated time wondering. Wondering why anyone would put a bench so that the sitter's nose was nuzzling a wire fence. Why someone would place a seat with a tree trunk right in front of it. And why nobody had bothered to prune back the shrubs that obscured the pleasing vista of the formal pond from the most inviting place of all, a sheltered bower. "Why? Why? Why?" we lamented, as we wandered like demented Ophelias from tragic seat to hapless bench. (Fortunately, we had the garden to ourselves.) One of the reasons, I suspect, for weirdly placed garden seating is that, quite simply, the owner forgets that the item in question is for sitting upon, and sees it instead as some kind of feature, a handy object that will fill a hole in the garden picture.
The thing to remember - as obvious as it is - is that seats in a garden are for sitting. This means that they should be easy to get to, without the potential sitter having to negotiate obstacles. They should also enjoy some kind of a view and, lastly, they should look good where they are. That's all you need to know.
Let's look at the size and style of seating (which comes under the "looking good where they are" category). In general, smaller gardens demand smaller, simpler styles, while larger spaces can absorb bigger, more elaborate pieces. Of course, there are exceptions - but it helps to know the "rules" before you start bending them. Modern houses, in general, call for contemporary or plain, unadorned garden furniture, where the clean lines echo those of the architecture. Decorative, cast iron (or cast aluminium) stuff can look out of place in such an environment. Some cast metal pieces on the market now are strangely proportioned (to fit today's smaller gardens), while others are inelegant affairs where a twiddly, fiddly metal bit is set into a wooden frame - giving the furniture an uneasy neither-fish-nor-fowl character. Exercise extreme caution when buying anything with twirly metal. And remember that antique, or antique-looking chairs and benches look best with a correspondingly elderly house. Heavy furniture needs a formal and structured situation (possibly with paving or gravel underneath) to balance its substance and to give it a sense of solidity.
The further from the house, the more informal your garden seating can be. If you are lucky enough to have a woodland or wild area, then rustic benches and chairs, made from naturalistic pieces of tree trunk and limb, still wrapped in their bark, will lend an appealing, gothic air. This kind of furniture, which you can make yourself if you're handy, doesn't have a terribly long lifespan. If you're all thumbs, however, just set a few hefty logs on their ends: these are the simplest kinds of seats, and are all you need in a wooded or meadowy place.
If you're putting a bench on the lawn, remember that you will have to move it every time you mow, so make sure it is portable. Or if it is substantial, position it carefully along the edge and lay paving under it.
Most metal seats can be left out all year; but wooden furniture will last longer if stored under cover during the winter. When you buy (and now is a good time, as some shops are clearing out their stock at the end of the season), remember that you'll need dry space to stow it for several months. Wooden furniture should be oiled, or otherwise treated, every year. If you do it before you store it, the timber will have the whole winter to absorb the oil, or whatever other product you've used.
Painting furniture - whether it is wood or metal - can make a world of difference to its character. White jumps out and meets the eye, and is usually best seen against a calm, green background, such as a lawn.
Retiring colours are safer, and are probably wiser for small gardens: navy, dark green, grey, or sludgy combinations of these. In really tiny city gardens, seating can be incorporated into the design, on the edges of raised beds, for instance. Built-in benches can house concealed storage space, for garden tools, bags of compost and empty pots.
Finally, before you put any furniture outside, go back to the idea of the garden being like an outdoor house. Remember not to clutter its rooms with inappropriate benches and seats, and you'll be sitting pretty.