Last Updated on February 23, 2025
The Perfect Pergola from Backyard Discovery – Special Reader Offer
Are you dreaming of long hot summer days spent in the garden? By July we are all looking for ways to be outside, but most of us want to at least have the option of shade. And aren’t we all secretly wanting to channel our own inner Alan Titmarsh and create somewhere to camp out for the afternoon – an outdoor room if you like?
I’m lucky to have a largeish garden but I’ve never thought too much about adding anything structural to improve my family’s outdoor experience preferring to let nature take its course. But we were recently approached to review a product from Backyard Discovery, a company specialising in ‘play and patio products’ including gazebos, pergolas, playsets, playhouses and grill gazebos. The process has made me think for the first time about new ways to use my outdoor areas as a more managed social and leisure space and with spring and summer just on the doorstep, this seemed like a perfect opportunity.
If you have children or grandchildren you may be interested to see the range of garden play equipment and playhouses and if my grandson was a little older, I may well have gone down that route. However, it seemed to make sense to look at the pergola and gazebo options. And here I have to make a confession – I didn’t know the difference between the two! So, if like me you are uninitiated in the mysteries of garden features then you should know that a pergola has vertical posts, cross-beams and an open-latticed roof which are often covered with vines. A gazebo is similar but has a roof allowing for outdoor activities such as barbeques all through the year whilst keeping you dry! I made the decision to go with a pergola. The new metal Trenton pergola has recently received the Good Housekeeping Home Reno Award in 2022 in the Excellent Exteriors category; but I was seduced by the clean lines and white, modernist aesthetic of the Windham Modern Steel Pergola.
I had a vision of long summer days and evenings, cooking, eating, drinking and listening to music with friends; and not long after the very straightforward online ordering process I received a call from the delivery company announcing that they were ready to deliver my Windham Modern Steel Pergola. Two fit young chaps turned up with four boxes and put them where I asked. It was good that they were fit as the boxes were heavy!
There are excellent printed instructions as well as an online app and the first thing to do was to lay out the various components together in their groups. I was struck by the quality of the parts. They seemed very sturdy and well-finished. The Windham offers all-weather, all-season functionality and I’m pleased to say is maintenance-free and rust-resistant ‘while offering protection against chipping, scratching, corrosion, and UV harm’. It’s also ‘certified to withstand up to 160 km per hour winds’ and comes with a full shade canopy and a 5-year warranty. To cut to the chase it’s a well-specced, solid piece of kit!
Building the pergola was fun, though it did need the suggested three people. These days I’m a very tall 5’8” so it was great to have my son and son-in-law who are both over 6 foot to help. The whole job took around 5 hours and requires a level surface. It was super useful to have the appropriate drill bits supplied. After the building process, it is up to you to dress your pergola as you see fit.
The Windham Modern Steel Pergola comes supplied with a blind to keep you out of the sun and is ideal for barbeques, pizza ovens, chimineas and outdoor furniture. It’s smart enough now to make me want to get outside, and it’s going to look stunning once the fairy lights are up and the vines growing. I’m really excited about the pergola and can’t wait until the summer gets started!
We are really pleased to be able to offer our readers a code – LONDONUNATTACHED15 – for a 15% discount off the whole Backyard Discovery site which is valid until the 30th of May 2023. For more information look here
https://www.backyarddiscovery.co.uk/
Need the BBQ to go with your Pergola? Check out our review of the Bar-Be-Quick and Bake or for smaller households of the Sous-chef BBQ and Smoker
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