Critique requested on garden-bench picture

Its a nice picture, personally I'd have tweaked the framing slightly by centering the bench right in the middle of the frame and possibly going half-to-one stop higher on aperture and the corresponding amount lower on shutter speed (or ISO) to exaggerate the effect of a shallow-ish DOF a bit more.

Also, can I ask why in B&W? Is it simply a monochrome, or did you consider eg an orange filter while shooting B&W?