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The garden does not have to close down the moment the clocks go back. With a fire pit or chiminea, a bit of planning and the right fuel, October and November evenings can be among the most enjoyable of the year. Here is how to set the scene safely, keep the smoke down and tie it in with the seasonal jobs that still need doing.
Choosing where to put the fire
Siting matters more than the fire itself. Place a fire pit on a hard, level surface — paving, gravel or compacted hardcore — and keep it at least three metres from fences, sheds, hedges and overhanging branches. Conifer hedges in particular scorch badly and rarely recover.
If your only level spot is lawn, use a stand or a bed of slabs underneath. A fire pit sitting directly on turf will leave a sterile brown circle that takes a full season to grass over again. Think about prevailing wind too: you want smoke drifting away from the house and, just as importantly, away from the neighbours’ washing line and open windows.
A quick checklist before you light up
- A bucket of water or sand within reach
- No low branches above the fire
- Seating a sensible distance back, not crowded around the edge
- Nothing combustible stored nearby, including seed trays and fleece
- Ash left to cool completely — often 24 hours or more — before you empty it
Why dry wood matters so much
Most smoky, disappointing fires come down to one thing: wet wood. Freshly felled timber can be half water by weight. Burning it wastes energy boiling that moisture off, produces thick smoke, coats flues with tar and makes an outdoor fire far less pleasant to sit beside.
Under the Ready to Burn rules, wood sold in small quantities in England must have a moisture content of 20 per cent or below. That figure is worth remembering whether you are buying in or seasoning your own. A cheap moisture meter, split the log, test the fresh inner face — anything above 20 per cent needs longer in the stack.
Seasoning your own takes patience. Split logs, stacked off the ground under a roof but open at the sides, usually need one to two years depending on species. If you have the space and a source of timber, it is satisfying work. If you do not, buying in is the practical answer, and Kiln dried logs are dried in a controlled chamber rather than left to the weather, which is why they arrive ready to use rather than needing another winter in the woodshed.
Which species suit an outdoor fire
Hardwoods burn longer and more steadily than softwoods, which is what you want for an evening outside rather than a quick blaze.
- Ash — the classic choice. Burns well, splits cleanly and gives a steady flame.
- Oak — dense and slow-burning, ideal once the fire is established, though it needs a hot bed of embers to get going.
- Birch — lights readily with a bright flame, useful for building the fire up, but burns through faster.
- Beech and hornbeam — both dense and long-lasting, good for the second half of the evening.
Avoid anything treated, painted or glued. Old fence panels, pallets and decking offcuts may be free, but they can release unpleasant fumes and leave residues you would rather not have near vegetable beds. Scrap timber and garden fires are not a sensible pairing.
Compressed heat logs are a tidy alternative if storage is tight. They are made from kiln-dried sawdust under pressure, stack neatly in a small space and burn with very little smoke. Many gardeners keep a bag of them for damp evenings when the loose logs have not quite stayed as dry as hoped, and suppliers such as Firewood Giant stock them alongside conventional logs.
Fitting the fire around autumn jobs
A fire evening works well as a reward at the end of a productive day. Late October is the time to lift and store dahlia tubers once the foliage has blackened, plant tulip bulbs, cut back herbaceous perennials that have collapsed and give the lawn its final cut of the year on a high blade setting.
One word of caution: resist the urge to burn your prunings on the fire pit. Green growth smoulders rather than burns and produces far more smoke than seasoned logs. Woody prunings are better chipped or stacked in a quiet corner as a habitat pile — hedgehogs, beetles and overwintering amphibians will all use it. If you do keep a bonfire heap, always move it to a fresh spot immediately before lighting, because hedgehogs settle in surprisingly quickly.
Keeping the garden in use for longer
A fire pit extends the season by weeks at very little cost. Dry fuel, a sensible site and a bit of consideration for the neighbours are really all it takes. Add a few lanterns along the path, a couple of blankets on the bench and the garden becomes somewhere you want to be well into November — which is, after all, rather the point of all that work during the summer.
