Fresh in for this Summer are the Menton garden sofa and armchair range... Combining contemporary design, with classic materials, we think the Menton set will work well in any outside space, traditional or modern.

Available with bespoke pads in a range of outdoor-resistent fabrics, the Menton sofa and armchair will be evailable from June.

Our new range of garden funriture has started to arrive for 2011 and the Tubby range of garden sofa and armchair have a new range off fabrics to choose from.

The sofa and armchair pad fabric comes in four new shades, Grey (seen here), Black, Navy & Cream. The greyand black give the classic Tubby set a very contemporary look and should be popular this summer.

Check out the new Tubby Garden Sofa & Armchair and give us a call with any queries at all...

Having come across this fantastic looking bamboo Macbook case on Treehugger, we thought we'd post a few details, as this has to be one of the most handsome Macbook cases we've seen.

Silva Limited fashions the Macbook cases from a solid sheet of bamboo, which is CNC machined and hand-finished, before an equally beautiful hand-finished strap is added.

The bamboo cases are very light and come lined with wool felt, to ensure your precious Macbook remains pristine!

Available in 13" & 15" versions, Silva Limited are apparently looking for UK distributors, so fingers crossed...

Check out the beautifully executed website http://www.silvaltd.com/

As the evenings get lighter and (hopefully) warmer, keep an eye on Bau Outdoors. Summer 2011 will see plenty of new garden furniture added to the range both classic and contemporary. The Tubby contemporary garden sofas get a range of new fabric finishes and our traditional cast garden furniture becomes available in a range of not so traditional colours (call us for details).

Items from the new range will be added over the next couple of weeks, so come back and see what we have to offer and as always, give us a call with any queries at all.

With spring around the corner and things getting busy at Bau Outdoors, there is a lot of garden furniture related work to get through and it’s often nice to get out of the office and work elsewhere for a change of scenery...

Having fallen in love with our iPad last year, we bought ourselves a Christmas present that promised to make getting out of the office for a couple of hours a bit easier. The ZAGGmate is an iPad case with an integrated keyboard, which seems like a brilliant idea and helps move your iPad a little closer to a do-it-all device.

We thought we would write a little review of the ZAGGmate and let you know how we’ve got on with it so far. They’re not cheap, so it’s nice to get a couple of opinions before splashing out!

ZAGGmate review...

Music. Often an essential ingredient when out relaxing in the garden… The problem is getting the music into the garden. Do you play it from the house at a volume you (& your neighbours) can hear outside? Do you buy yourself something to take out with you and much through batteries all summer?!

We came across this ingenious and rather lovely iPhone dock from American company, Koostik. The dock is made by hand from solid wood and using simple acoustics, amplifies the volume of your iPhone by between 2 and 4 times.

Designed to work with all generations of iPhone, the Koostik won’t replace your HiFi when your party requires a bit more dancing volume, but seems a very elegant solution for taking your music/podcasts out into the garden without the need for extensions/batteries.

As well as the obvious ecological advantage of the Koostik dock over it’s powered rivals, the design of the dock is a lovely mix of classic and contemporary and will look great indoors or out in the garden.

See the full Koostik range here.

Living in the city is great, but the lack of foliage can be a little depressing and trying to create a green haven in your garden can be difficult when all you have as a starting point is a few square metres of concrete.

Since moving into our city pad, the concrete/greenery ration has been shifting from 100% concrete to a little more like 50-50, which has made a huge difference to the feel of the garden and the house itself.

We created two arches and trained creepers to bridge the walkway – they did not too much training to be honest – these things are rampant! The occasional half hour trimming however is actually quite therapeutic, so it’s been a nice chore these last few months.

We thought we’d post a couple of shots to show the results.

We had a nice old cast iron fireplace hanging around, which we painted and just leave out as a focal point.

We’ll be adding a bit of lighting now the nights are drawing in. We will post a couple of updates.

Fran - Bau Outdoors

This beautiful ceramic birdhouse is the work of Luis porem (lovely site - well worth a visit) and caught our eye recently.

The birdhouse can be oriented differently, depending onyour outdoor space and we'd say it's the most handsome we've seen to date.

Sure to attract the morestyle-conscious of the local feathered population..!