Ebony wood has always stood apart from the rest, and now thanks to the works done in composite lumber it can do so for even longer. For those who do not know, composite lumber is an amalgam of wood and plastics, with a little extra something to keep you going for as long as needed. It can be difficult deciding what you want, where it goes, and what colour it should be, but at least now, thanks to this feat of human engineering, you can take as long as you need getting used to it.

The people behind the world of composite lumber have gone one step beyond the advancements in- anti-slip, anti-mould, moist-proof, anti-sun-bleaching, and anti-aging -and have decided, in a moment of confidence, to slap on an up to twenty-five-year warranty, freeing the rest of us to worry about the more complicated issues such as groove shape, grain configuration, and colour.

Ebony wood is cool, it stands alone in the garden, often because it’s just that one step more remarkable, and only slightly, incrementally, because black doesn’t go very well with other colours (but mostly it’s the cool stuff, which is what we’re talking about today.)

The Facts

People like to complain. The complain about the rain, and the sunshine, and the flash floods. The grumble at hurricanes, at slippery ice, at bad drivers. People complain, it’s in their genes, it’s part in part why we have survived as a species is because, when confronted with a predator, we would complain till it decided not to eat us out of principle. So, with that in mind, why wouldn’t people complain when we want to move to Alaska and build our garden out of Ebony wood? Let’s face it, there’s no pleasing some people.

Don’t ever let people tell you how to live your life. Those that love you, having spent years by your-side and inside your head should know that if you want to build a garden in the artic, giving it the appearance of a zebra (once you dig it out of six feet of snow drift) then that’s what you’re going to do. A wonderful thing about Ebony wood is that it gives you the confidence to take that plunge, to embrace a little chaos. And, thanks to advancements in human engineering you can take comfort in the knowledge that you have twenty-five-year before you have to start worrying about reality.

A twenty-five-year guarantee is about as long as you want to raise a child. You love them more than anything before. You listen to their mad thoughts. You kiss their cuts and scrapes, all so they can feel confident enough to go back out and live life. Then, somewhere around the twenty-year mark you start looking at your watch, waiting for them to pack up and leave. One morning you wake up, first coffee of the day in hand, and then you see them stood there, by the door, off to college, or to work on an oil-rig, and then they leave. If only decking worked like that.

That being said, perhaps that’s the point of good composite decking. We spend twenty-five-years together. Moments of laughter and love and starry-skied drinking. Barbeques, and pool parties. And then there are the bad days, the teary-eyed difficult breakups, the incontinent pets, the sick children. Good and bad, like life. Then, the day after the twenty-five-years, the decking collapses because the magic’s run out, and you’re left with the feeling that if you wanted, possibly all in black once again, we could do it all again. In classic black.

Conclusion

In conclusion, nobody should put you down with facts or opinions relating to the downsides of decking your entire garden in ebony. Who is to say it’s wrong to garden-scape the whole thing to look like Mordor? Perhaps you’re a big fan of Victorian culture, the laudanum, maudlin poetry, and sinister dolls. The important thing to remember is that you’re right, no matter how many times your significant other states is simply not the case.

Composite decking is a strange thing, there’s lots of information about this here. Part plastic, part wood, all recycled which means we don’t have to worry about it going anywhere soon. It’s a wonderful thing to know that if we’re not exactly making the world a better place, at least we’re not making it worse. We can wake up in the morning to see that the trees are still there, while waiting for those hard-working intelligent folks down at the composite site to come up with even darker shades of wood. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do a little good, especially in such style.