Just as everyone was getting excited for the warmer weather and lighter nights in comes the snow across the UK. Yes, it’s March! The daffodils in our garden are completely confused as someone told them to come out because it’s Spring!

Anyway, I’m assuming this is just a minor weather blip on the way to proper spring, so will continue to press on with spring-like garden projects.

Are you planning a garden or backyard makeover this year, in time for the longer summer nights perhaps? If so, read on for some backyard inspiration.

Backyard Discovery

For over 30 years, Backyard Discovery has been producing the highest quality wooden swing sets, playhouses and backyard leisure products for the home. Their team of innovators and specialists are passionate about bringing their love of quality family moments to your backyard, getting everyone outside more and spending time together.

What a wonderfully authentic motivation for a business! This company are clearly passionate about encouraging quality family time outdoors. We know that being outdoors is beneficial for both our mental and physical well-being, as is being with loved ones.

Backyard Discovery have a stunning selection of play sets, pergolas and gazebos that can transform your backyard or garden. These all come in kit form with pre-drilled holes for ease and speed, that you can put together yourself at home, or of course pay someone to assemble for you.

Currently there are four different wooden swing sets, two playhouses, six pergolas (some wood, some metal), and four gazebos. There are a range of sizes and shapes of all of these, meaning that there are items to fit a range of outdoor spaces and intended uses.

Available at Garden Play Equipment, Playhouses, Pergolas UK – Backyard Discovery – Backyard Discovery UK, other select retailers and on Amazon.

Our experience

We’ve been working with Backyard Discovery to try out one of their gazebos. We were keen to be able to use the gazebo as almost an extension of the house at the back, so the area we highlighted was our back patio. It’s our intention to pop some nice outdoor furniture underneath it at some point (along with our daughter’s ice bath), so that even if the weather isn’t always dry we can still eat outside more in the warmer weather. As parents we all embrace eating outside for lots of reasons – but of course there is the added bonus of that phrase we can all say about the debris that misses little mouths, that’s right, “the birds will eat it!”.

We opted for the 4.9m x 3.6m Norwood Gazebo. This arrived very quickly and was delivered by an efficient and careful courier who carried the boxes around the back of our property to the site where the gazebo was to be built. The gazebo was boxed into six separate boxes.

We paid for our builders to assemble the gazebo for us, as quite frankly, assembling anything of this magnitude with my husband would have most certainly ended in divorce – can any of you relate?

The instructions come in the box but can also be printed off or are available on an app to follow step by step, which is ideal.

The biggest issue with assembling our gazebo was the crazy snow that arrived the day after the build began. As we live in the hills the roads are generally not cleared or gritted so we were unable to get in or out for a couple of days. It was a good test of strength for the partially built gazebo though, as the weight of the snow must have been quite something – just look at that overhang!

Flat pack kits in general make me a bit nervous as I always expect parts to be missing. The first task that the instructions ask of you is to lay everything out on the ground in categories. This is a great way to organise the parts and ensure nothing is missing. Nothing was missing, which of course made life easier.

The build of our Norwood Gazebo in total took three people around 11 hours to construct. All holes are pre-drilled to save you time. There was a small issue with some of these not lining up during the construction, but I think this was more about the level of our ground, rather than the gazebo parts.

One of the things that is quite striking is that the quality of the wood seems really good on this gazebo. It looks smart and feels robust. It is a great size and gives really good coverage to our back patio, almost filling it.

Another real plus point for us is how wind-resistant the structure is. During the snowy days we also had quite strong winds. Bearing in mind that the gazebo was still only partially constructed at this point, it remained incredibly sturdy. We often have very strong winds here, so this is necessary.

It would be lovely to always have these types of things handmade by skilled craftsmen in a bespoke way to fit your needs, but the price of wood and this kind of service means that isn’t always possible for people. I would say that ordering a kit from Backyard Discovery makes these types of constructions for your home much more affordable, whilst retaining the quality of the overall finished construction. If you are looking for a construction like this, but just can’t justify the cost to build something bespoke, it would be well worth considering one of these kits to transform your outdoor space in time for the warmer weather.

It’s so nice to have this gazebo finally up! Now I just need to jet wash the patio and order some furniture!

Discount

I’m pleased to be able to offer Mummy Fever readers a 15% site-wide discount at Backyard Discovery. That’s a decent chunk of money off a play set, gazebo or pergola in time for the summer! Just enter MUMMYFEVER15 at the checkout to get your discount. *Discount valid until 31/03/23 on the Backyard Discovery website only*

*This is a collaborative article for Backyard Discovery*