Unique Rustic Handmade Benches

Bench and Bower

• Build a bench as part of a vine-covered arbor for a mini-retreat in the garden. Use cedar or teak for long lasting wood that will weather to a beautiful silver. Keep the design very simple -- the bench may have arms and a lattice back or just link two arbor supports as a single board for seating. For even more character, salvage scrap lumber to build your bench and arbor, preserving the dings, distressing and old paint left on the wood. Cut a battered wooden ladder to fit the length of the bench as a seat back. Pave the ground beneath the bench and arbor with flat pavers or stepping stones edged in Irish moss or another ground cover so the arbor looks as if it has always been there.

Wild West

• A bench of old wooden wagon wheels cut in half could be exactly right in your Texas garden. Two half-wheels form the back of the bench and two half-wheels become the arms and sides. The seat is reclaimed and polished old hardwood planks. This bench is rustic but it's a bit of a showpiece and you may want to protect it from weather wear by placing it under a covered pergola or on a patio.

Rusty Wrought Iron

• A corner of the flower garden welcomes wood sprites, fairies, and the little people who can still see them, when you set a child-size bench amid the blossoms. Look for a real vintage bench in country antique stores or a reproduction in a craftsman's shop. Handmade wrought iron will be slightly irregular, which is part of its charm. Reproduction designs will include an aged rust finish or worn, distressed and chipped enamel. A small, old fashioned, child's bench is not quite two feet high and barely wider so it's easy to scramble up on and there's just enough room to share with a friend. Early in the morning, when the sprites are still flitting about and the children are dreaming, you might borrow the bench yourself to take a break from deadheading the roses.

Tree-cycling

• Make a bench from two cut tree trunk sections and a slab of reclaimed barn wood. Measure and cut two broad sections of a culled tree--if you have access to the root sections of two trees, cut them flat on the bottom, preserving any spreading roots possible. Then use a level to cut the tops flat at the seat-height for your bench. Hammer or screw a sanded, wide, barn wood board to the tree trunks, using more than one board if the lumber is narrow. The bench will age even more in the garden and the tree trunk "legs" blend it right into the landscape. Placing the trunk sections where you want to locate the bench and then attaching the seat makes this a much easier project.