Greening the Couch, or Moving the Potatoes Outside

Among the 11 sites of the green couches is this one on England's southwest Devon coast. The team also fabricated a grass table to allow a civilized cup of tea while lounging.

''Couch potato'' needs no explanation, at least not in the U.S. or in the U.K.

Great Britain's National Trust says research reveals its citizens spend the equivalent of 13 weeks a year on the sofa. The West Midlanders are the most sedentary, spending 50 hours a week on the couch.

The large couch at Osterley Park, one of the last surviving country estates in London, required about 100 sq. meters of turf and almost 50 hay bales.

In response to these findings, the National Trust has brought the sofa to the outdoors, but not your leather, naugahyde or whatever materials the lounging industry is using these days. No, these sofas, 10 ordinary size and a giant one, have a bases and are covered in turf.

No, it's not a Monty Python skit. The idea, apparently, is to entice people out of the house and away from the boob tube. At least a person has to walk to the outdoor couch before lounging begins, a further distance than between the refrigerator and sofa at home. And who knows, once outside a person might do a bit of gratuitous walking and enjoy the scenery.

The normal size sofas require 14 bales of hay to create the basic shape. The teams used a Hessian (coarse woven) mesh to keep the hay from falling apart, then wrapped the hay around and secured the backrest to the front of the sofa.

With the base secure, people sat on them during their lunch hours to soften the hay. Twenty meters of turf in sheets, grown just for this venture, was then wrapped around the hay bases and sowed together by over 500 incisions around corners and sides.

The giant sofa at London's Osterley Park required nearly 100 sq. meters of turf and almost 50 hay bales. It's reported that before any of the team had the chance to enjoy the new sofa, a lone butterfly and ladybird landed on the sofa.

The 10 green ''living rooms'' are scattered about the British countryside and gardens, from Kingston Lacey, Dorset on the southern coast, to Plas Newydd in Wales and Rowallane Garden in Northern Ireland.

Now the question is, what do you call these turf couches? A Greench, a grouch?