I wrote this post especially for the Introduce Your City contest, the theme: "Seating Accommodations".
My first reaction to the relaunch of the IYC community contests was: "How great is this! I wanted to show those great benches, but for some reason I didn't have time or... well, something got in my way". With enthusiasm I went to look for pictures of "those great" benches... and I realized what was stopping me last time.
There's nothing bad to say about the benches themselves, they're beautiful. I wanted to show two stone benches from Oranienbaum park. The material for these benches was two huge granite boulders, brought to the territory of the future park by the glacier. Some thousand years they peacefully lay on ledge of a terrace of the ancient sea while the most Serene Prince Menshikov has not given the order to change and decorate an area adjoining to his new palace.
The frugal gardeners decided not to move the boulders, but to hollow out a horizontal shelf in each of them, transforming them into massive benches. Two such benches are located at different ends of the park. One bench is quite simple, just a stone ledge, the other has communicated with the stonemasons for much longer, its shape is more perfect, and its side edge is decorated with writings carved in stone, telling the history of the park.
But I won't show you these benches today for a technical reason: I was walking around the park with an old smartphone, and the quality of the photos is too far from acceptable.
But I still want to tell you a lot about the benches. I purposely went to the garden near my house to take photos of the ordinary, wooden benches there. They don't have a history as romantic as stone benches, but they're very comfortable. To be honest, sitting on a stone bench isn't very pleasant most of the year. Only on hot sunny days the stone gets hot enough that such a seat isn't uncomfortable. Wooden benches are better!
My favourite place to sit in the garden is the swing. It was this swing that I photographed at the start of my walk. I went for a walk quite early in the morning and there weren't many people in the park, but almost all the swings were already occupied. You could see all sorts of people on the swings: small children, serious men in business suits, schoolchildren with smartphones in their hands, and elderly women in dainty hats. Everyone loves a swing!
The second most popular place to sit is the benches by the fountains. There are two fountains in this garden, arranged symmetrically, they are almost the same but look slightly different because of the different lighting. Around the fountains are white wooden benches with a very comfortable shape. The seat of these benches has a perfect slope, and the back of these benches has a perfect curve to make sitting as comfortable as possible. These benches are sometimes called 'park sofas'. There are similar benches in other corners of the garden, but the place by the fountains is the most pleasant.
But if you get bored just sitting on a bench, you can opt for something special. Behind the hedge is a different kind of seating area. The park exercise machines can also be considered as seating, but they are not designed for relaxation, but quite the opposite - for physical activity.
I want to complete my story about benches in urban gardens with a little bonus. It's not for nothing that I told you about the stone benches in the park in Oranienbaum for so long, is it? I can't show you those benches today, but I found another stone bench in my photo archive.
It is a bench from Alexandria Park in Peterhof. Alexandria Park was the home park of the imperial family, it's a small cosy park on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. I came across a stone bench in one corner of the park during a walk in April this year. You can walk past this boulder, turned into a place to sit, and not notice it: it's really just an ordinary boulder, perfectly integrated into the landscape and not standing out from the colour scheme of the surrounding landscape.
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| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
Details about the contest and rules of participation can be found here:
@hive-137094/iyc-community-contest-6-contests
