Gardening: Teak - a Touch of the Exotic in your Home & Garden.

It's a hot summer day. The sun is shining on your outdoor table, where a glass of orange juice is awaiting you. Your feet touch the soft grass and, right before reaching the place of relax, would love to step on a pleasant wooden surface, anticipating the delight of the fresh drink.

Or maybe it's winter, and outside it's cold and wet. You'd like to have some surface to walk on without mudding your shoes. Then, you think of what you might need...

In all these cases, and many more, teak is the right answer. Grey and green are no longer going to be the two predominant colours of your living space. Thanks to teak, the famous South-East Asia wood, golden, dark-brown and even reddish shades of colour will enrich the "palette" of your home's atmospheres.

Would you like to feel like you had parquet in your own garden? Think of modular decking systems. Teak, in fact, is a new solution for many Irish houses: a variety of timber that will give you the unique opportunity to create warm and welcoming environments, where to spend pleasant moments with your family and friends.

Ideal for offering a soft and relaxing decking for your patios, porches and balconies, teak also allows you to create a charming variation to more traditional tiles, and to add an exotic touch to your place. It suggests an ideal transition from your home to the surrounding green, so as to break all boundaries between the indoor and the outdoor of your house.

Traditionally used for garden furniture, teak is an excellent flooring and decking option, because it can excellently withstand the sudden changes of weather. It's very resistant and never splits, cracks or warps. Moreover, it doesn't cause rust when it is in contact with metal. You won't have problems with termites, either, as they cannot attack it.

Miroslaw Moroz (author) is director and owner of Teakodeck. He has been involved in modular teak decking system distribution, sales and promotion.

MFA CORP@hobbies