Our Promise For The Future
For every seat you order, we will plant a tree.
The most important part of our products is the raw material – the wood itself.
We exclusively use FSC-certified timber and take immense pride in the quality of wood we source.
We've always been incredibly conscious of our environmental impact and we're constantly striving to do more.
From now, for all of the swings that we make, we will plant a tree.
We are working with Creating Tomorrow's Forests, so any future purchases you make with us will come with a certificate showing the name and location of your tree(s).
You don't need to do or sign anything, and there are no additional costs involved. As a company, we want to help the environment, and this seemed the most relevant way for us to play our part.
Creating Tomorrows Forest's have planted almost 8 million trees around the UK, we're going to help them plant even more.
Providing new habitats for wildlife
Remove CO2 from the air
Forests can boost mental health
Why We Use Wood For
Our Furniture
We believe that wood is the most ecologically responsible material that we can use to create our beautifully handcrafted outdoor furniture. By making sure that we’re actively replacing the trees that we source, we know our carbon footprint will be minimised.
Planting trees is the most effective natural solution in the fight against climate change. Trees are able to absorb excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and store it as carbon. By using wood for our swing seats, and helping Creating Tomorrow’s Forest plant as many trees as possible, we believe we’ve invested in the right sustainable base material.
The planet’s resources are limited, so it’s vital that we, as business, put back what we take out. By committing to ecologically sound habitat creation projects like Creating Tomorrow’s Forests, we want to assure our customers that we’re serious about environmental issues.
Sustainable woods: Which should you choose?
We use a range of sustainable timbers for our swing seats; oak, western red cedar and pine. Oak, unsurprisingly, is the hardest wood available, and has the greatest impact resistance. While it’s a more expensive option, it offers a durability and resilience that can’t be matched.
Western red cedar is a durable softwood commonly used to make cedar shingles for roof tiles. It’s a superb material with which to make outdoor furniture, thanks to its fine, straight grain, colour, flexibility and strength in proportion to its weight. Perhaps it’s most valuable property, however, is its natural impermeability to liquids. A perfect wood for outdoor use.
Pine, while a less expensive option, still offers strong, shock-resistant qualities that make it ideal for furniture. As pine ages, it gains patina and produces that rustic, antique quality that looks glorious in a garden setting.
We’re always open to trying new materials or types of wood for our swing seats and are happy to discuss any ideas our customers might have. We are striving to take responsibility for the environmental impact we have on the planet and will always look to use sustainable materials in the construction of our outdoor furniture.
We hope that our partnership with Creating Tomorrow’s Forests is just the beginning!
Wood: a versatile tool?
There are many wonderful and useful properties that make wood a perfect choice for an outdoor swing seat—not just the environmental advantages of using a sustainable material.
Firstly, rather than deteriorate over time, when cared for and looked after properly, wood actually improves. Take any of our oak swing seats; when it first arrives, it’s a glorious shade of tan.
Over time, and exposed to the tumultuous, ever-changing British weather, it transforms into a stunning, majestic silver. The same can be said of the Western Red Cedar we use. Just as long as you keep it clean and employ the right nurturing techniques, wooden swing seats will always improve with age.
For an aesthetics point of view, we believe that a natural wooden swing seat looks far more appealing in a garden or outdoor space, than one made of metal or plastic. If you’re searching for an organic piece of furniture that looks at home in its environment, wood is the material of choice for your swing seat.
Environmentally and locally conscious
Along with the environmental impact of creating swing seats, the forging of strong working relationships with local businesses and the local community is a core belief of ours; we do everything we can to support the area and do our best to provide jobs to local residents. We have five joiners, all of whom work under license for us within about a 5 mile radius of our base in Lyme Regis, Dorset.
One advantage of living in the South West, in this beautiful little part of the world, is that there are three main industries: agriculture, tourism and building. If you’re an independent joiner or carpenter, then, you’d better make sure you’re good at it! This provides Sitting Spiritually with an incredible talent pool of local tradespeople to create our swing seats. We're immensely proud of our local roots and will always endeavour to keep our business local.
Our aims as a business is to develop an outstanding local team of craftspeople and suppliers that are totally committed to enhancing the brand that is Sitting Spiritually.
Several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally-owned business, rather than a nationally-owned business, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers, and farms, which, in turn, will continue to strengthen the economic base of the community.
Small and independent businesses such as Sitting Spiritually are at the very heart of our communities. The economist and author Michael Schuman highlighted this by saying that when you support local business ‘control moves from the boardrooms of distant corporations and back into the community where it belongs’.
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