Garden zoning means sectioning your space to make the most of your outdoor area. It means you create dedicated pockets of space in your garden, from sun-drenched coffee corners and shady reading spots to vibrant entertaining spaces and children’s play areas.
Depending on the size and style of your garden, you might have a range of surfaces you want to furnish, either with different furniture sets for each zone, furniture that’s easy to move and works on multiple surfaces, or one style of furniture dotted around for a more cohesive, pulled-together look.
Here's how to approach choosing the right garden furniture for each zone, what works well where, and why bean bag furniture turns out to be remarkably good wherever it ends up!
What’s the best garden furniture for a patio?
Almost any garden furniture works well on a hard, flat patio surface, so this is the zone with the most options and where you can choose purely based on what you love the look of.
When it comes to furnishing your garden, the patio is an obvious starting point, and rightly so. It's solid, level, and close to the house, making it ideal for a classic dining table and chairs or a Mediterranean-style sofa set, depending on your style of outdoor dining and entertaining.
For a more casual and comfy alternative to the traditional rattan, teak or aluminium set, you could choose a modular sofa. That way, you can configure it to suit your space, and maybe even add a weatherproof ottoman or outdoor pouffe that serves perfectly as a low table for drinks, grazing platters and sharing plates.
Can you put garden furniture on wood decking?
You can, but beware the gaps between your decking slats, which can catch narrow chair legs and make furniture feel less stable than it would on solid paving. Sharp metal feet can scratch and damage the wood surface over time, particularly if you’ve opted for a softer timber.
Rubber caps on chair feet help here, and furniture with wider, flat bases mitigates the problem altogether.
Wooden decking is warmer underfoot than stone, more defined than grass, and usually raised just enough to feel like a proper outdoor room.
Our garden sofa sets work well on decking for exactly this reason: the modular format lets you configure a proper outdoor living room, and our range of fabrics means it can sit comfortably alongside almost any decking tone, from pale ash to rich hardwood.
Bean bag chairs are also a great option because they don’t have feet to mark the boards. They’re light enough not to stress the structure, and quick to dry, which is a bonus if your decked area is exposed and the weather turns, which in the UK is likely!
Can you get garden furniture that works on gravel?
The main thing to bear in mind with gravel is that narrow furniture legs will displace the stones over time, creating an uneven surface beneath. Whereas wide-based furniture, or furniture with no legs at all, sidesteps this entirely.
Our bean bag chairs and sun loungers are particularly well-suited to gravel. The wide fabric base sits flat on the stones without displacing them, and our marine-grade fabric handles contact with rough gravel without chipping or degrading.
A bean bag lounger on a well-laid gravel patio, surrounded by fragrant planting, is a lovely place to spend an afternoon.
Gravel is a wonderful surface because it’s low-maintenance, has great drainage, and can create an oasis-like effect when paired with lush green planting and terracotta pots. It's also increasingly popular as a secondary seating zone: a fire-pit corner, a tucked-away bench spot, a sun trap at the far end of the garden.
Our guide to building a gravel patio covers everything you need to know about setting up a gravel seating area.
(Image credit: Armadillo Sun customer)
Will garden furniture ruin the lawn?
The main consideration with grass is moisture. UK lawns hold a lot of water, and furniture left in one spot will eventually show it, both on the furniture and on the grass beneath.
The answer is to choose furniture that's light enough to move regularly and made from materials that don't mind getting damp.
Our guide to putting furniture on grass goes into this in more detail.
Bean bag chairs are genuinely brilliant on grass. Light enough to carry with one hand, they can be moved to follow the sun or give the lawn underneath them a rest. The wipe-clean fabric doesn't rot in damp conditions and can easily handle inevitable mud. Bean bag chairs dotted around the lawn, away from the house, are an easy way to make what is often the sunniest part of the garden the most relaxing.
Should you put furniture underneath trees?
A wonderful addition to any garden, though they are, Evergreen trees annoyingly drop needles, leaves and other debris year-round. Add to that the layer of sticky residue from aphids or sap, and furniture left underneath can get dirty quickly. Anything with crevices, like a rattan weave, slatted wood, or deep fabric folds, will trap leaves and other muck stubbornly.
But, given that a spot of shade under a mature tree is one of the most sought-after seats in the garden on a hot day, this is one area where bean bag furniture works surprisingly well.
The smooth, taut fabric surface of our bean bag loungers gives debris nowhere to lodge, and anything that does settle on it wipes off easily. No cushion covers to launder and no wooden slats harbouring damp mulch over winter.
How to tie your zoned garden together
If you'd like your garden furniture to look cohesive across every zone, patio, gravel, lawn, and anywhere else, choose modular sets and individual pieces that you can freely mix, move, and reconfigure as the season or the occasion demands.
Call us biased, but we think our bean bag furniture does just the job.
The best garden furniture is the furniture that gets used, whether that’s a sofa on the patio, loungers on gravel, or a chair pulled onto the lawn to catch the evening sun. Choosing lightweight, weatherproof pieces that work across multiple surfaces makes it far easier to create a garden that's flexible, comfortable, and easy to live in.
Explore our weatherproof bean bag furniture collection.