Last Sunday was our last practical outing of 2019, to build a dry stone seat in the 'ruined croft' in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. The 'croft' is basically a small folly, on the banks of a pond at the back of the rock garden. It's mostly there as a backdrop to the surrounding planting, but inside is an under-used space, so those in charge thought that it might be nice to add somewhere where people could sit down.
The idea was to build a seat, or rather a bench, in the corner with the walls acting as a back rest. The Gardens had ordered in a couple of tons of stone - a bit much for the size of seat we could build, but one ton wouldn't've been enough. The stone was Olston, which is quite square, and there was quite a lot of good flat stuff for the seat top. They'd also sorted it out a bit for us, with the flat stuff and the small bits in separate piles, which meant we could crack on straight away, and in a couple of hours we'd got the first couple of courses done and made a start on the third.
After a break for lunch we got the final course finished ready for the flat slabs on the top.
Normally we'd mortar them in, but we reckoned that this spot would be vandal-free so they'd be fine as they were.
And after it had been tested by our official seat-tester, it was all done.
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