Five Reasons to Use Eucalyptus Wood for Outdoor Furniture
Feb 15th, 2010 by Hazel
Most people are familiar with using Treated Pine, Red Cedar, Teak, and even Oak for outdoor furniture. If you’re looking for more information on long-loved patio furniture materials that have stood the test of time, check our Shirley Bovshow’s Eden Makers Blog for tips and advice!
While traditional and time honored garden furniture materials will always be appropriate, beautiful, and well-respected, many designers are starting to use some unlikely candidates to craft their outdoor pieces. Today, I have five reasons to start looking at Eucalyptus Wood for your outdoor furniture!
Growing Eucalyptus Helps the Earth: Unlike a lot of vegetation, an abundance of Eucalyptus trees will offer a helping hand to many surrounding species. We all know that Koalas love their sweet leaves, but the trees’ rich flowers also provide a large source of food to pollinators such as insects, birds, and bats. Further, Eucalyptus trees draw a tremendous amount of water from the soil in order to grow, so planting them in places where architecture or human interference has caused damage will lower the water table and reduce soil salination. This is also a sparkling use of the earth’s water as the tree naturally cleans it of toxins to both release it back into the water cycle and create valuable oxygen.
Growing Eucalyptus Helps People: Eucalyptus trees have become economically important to many groups of people by becoming a cash crop in poor area of Africa, The Andes, and parts of South America. Not only does this cultivation bring prosperity to poorer communities, it also helps to maintain their health. The process of transpiration that causes Eucalyptus trees to use an incredible amount of water in their growth has caused many areas to plant Eucalyptus in overgrown swamps. Swamps that have developed over too large of a region create dangerous and outsized areas for mosquito larvae to foster. Using Eucalyptus trees to naturally downsize these overgrown swamps significantly reduces outbreaks of malaria.
Eucalyptus is a Sustainable Product: Eucalyptus is incredibly sustainable. First of all, the tree grows exceptionally fast and can be chopped at the root to grow back again. Because of its quick growing cycle and ability to re-grow from the roots, many wood production companies use plantation grown and carefully managed Eucalyptus trees instead of logging in native and valuable rain forests. And, this can continue for many decades, as well-managed plantations produce soil that can sustain endless replanting. Further, we can use more than just the Eucalyptus wood. Eucalyptus oil can be steam distilled for sustainable, natural cleaning and deodorizing products, and small quantities can have healing effects in cough drops and decongestants. The oil even has natural insect repelling properties for commercial mosquito repellants. Eucalyptus nectar is used to make high-quality monofloral honey, and all other parts are employed to make sustainable and natural dyes for fabrics. A plant with several attributes that can be used across industries makes it valuable, efficient, and better for the earth.
Eucalyptus is Durable and Weather-Resistant: With naturally occurring oils that contain insect repelling properties, this wood is perfect for outdoor furniture. When pre-treated and kiln dried, it is renowned for its excellent resistant to all variations of weather, insect attacks, and decay. It’s not just the oil though; Eucalyptus hardwood has an incredibly tight gain with a very high density. These attributes make the timber strong and resilient to all kinds of normally damaging outside factors. While a weather-resistant and durable wood is good for any product, outdoor furniture benefits from these characteristics more than most. Using Eucalyptus wood is not only helping the earth, animals, and people in developing countries… it’s helping you make sure you choose a material that is sure to last!
Eucalyptus is Gorgeous and Lustrous: If you checked out Shirley Bovshow’s Blog, you saw that Teak outdoor furniture is absolutely the most revered. Teak is enormously breathtaking in beauty, and has a density and durability that makes buyers flock. But, one of the reasons Teak wood boasts such a high price tag is the years and years it takes for the Teak tree to reach the maturity it needs to produce such a high-quality wood. But, premium grade Eucalyptus has the same resilience and beauty of Teak, with a much faster growing process that drives the prices down. With Eucalyptus, you can get a lovely natural luster in your wood that will last for decades—without breaking the bank!
Whew! Now that you know more about Euclyptus than you probably ever imagined you would before reading, you know that when choosing your next outdoor furniture set… Eucalyptus hardwood is a great material not only for you and your family, but the world and its eco-system as well.
See you Outside!
Hazel.
