Sheffield-based potter Kate Cooke talks about her work and her garden studio (pictured above) in an excellent interview on Folksy. Kate's handmade stoneware pottery (pictured below) is all made in her environmentally-friendly studio, a repurposed garden
shed, and is inspired by the Peak District landscape around her. "Making pottery involves lots of stages, " she says, "often with critical drying time
between each step, so it’s really handy having my studio space at home
in the garden." Well worth reading and you can visit her shop via the links above.
An 1886-7 watercolour by British artist Anna Alma-Tadema (1867 - 1943) called The Garden Studio. Anna was the daughter of the Dutch painter Sir
Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It shows the garden office painting studio at their home at 17 Grove End Road, St
John's Wood, London, which they both used while the house was undergoing rather spectacular refurbishment. The blue and white Delft plate top left is a reference to their Dutch background, and the bust next to the open door is of Lawrence. British Art Studies has an interesting article on the family's studio houses.
It's almost impossible to keep up with all the new garden office builds springing up at the moment, but here's one that really caught our eye. It's the new writing shed belonging to Kentucky-based novelist Alix Harrow. It sums up one of the pieces of advice we always give to proto-shedworkers asking for advice about size, that it's important to make your garden office the size you want, not the size that other people require since, in the nicest possible way, it's all about you. So while Alix's may be smaller than most readers' builds, it's perfect for her. It's one of the most appealing garden offices we've seen for a while.
It cost about $850 to build, using salvaged windows and tin, and the whole thing was designed and put together by Alix and her family. It's insulated but there's no electricity, with warmth supplied via a propane heater. Interestingly, it has been placed deliberately out of wifi range.
Entries are already coming in for the Shed of the Year 2021 competition. One of our early favourites is Clutterbuck Lodge in the Cabin/Summerhouse category, owned by Martin Gabbutt who lives in the foothills of the Pennines. Not only is it a lovely shape, it's made almost completely from recycled furniture which Martin buys at auction. More images at the links above.
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning
It seems that everybody is getting in on the shedworking trend in lockdown. Latest to the garden office game is actor Cate Blanchett who has recently got planning permission to build her shedlike atmosphere on the grounds of her estate in East Sussex. It will include a meditation room and studio, as well as a small gallery to hang her art collection, because as her planning agent is quoted as saying: “They are creative people and it is beneficial for them to have a
place to work that is tranquil and inspires through the beauty of the
art, architecture and landscape setting.”
An interesting point to note is that to build the new office suite - pictured above - she needs to knock down a derelict cottage and shed but that these are home to a bat colony so she must take steps to house them (in bat boxes or via a special bat loft) to fulfil the terms of the permission.
Also currently undergoing the planning process is fellow actor Rosamund Pike who wants to build a garden office with "retractable letterbox window" (not quite sure what that actually is) in the back garden of her home in London. According to the application, she requires "more amenable, useable and flexible
space in and around the private, though overshadowed, rear garden".
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Well, The Economist seems to think so. Here's a snippet:
Urban scholars... are busy trying to work out whether
the rise in home-working that has occurred during the covid-19 pandemic
will endure when the virus ebbs. If it does, many service jobs in
cities, from baristas to taxi drivers, will disappear. Public-transport
systems will struggle. The value of city-centre property will tank. The
shed boom makes that outcome more likely. A white-collar worker who has
tried to work from the kitchen table for the past nine months might be
keen to return to the office. A worker who has an insulated garden shed
with Wi-Fi will be less so...
A lovely garden office from Spanish architects delavegacanolasso who are also using it to enter the tiny house market (despacho means office in English). The studio is build of prefabricated modules around a Corten Steel frame. It's lined with poplar wood and insulated with recycled cotton. It's all made in Spain and is dropped off on site fully furnished - with kitchen furniture, cabinets and worktops - and good to go.
Unsurprisingly, given the latest lockdown, garden offices and shedworking are right back at the top of the news agenda. Here's a roundup of some of the latest articles in the media which are of interest:
On a tour of Scotland in 1803, poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy saw a building Dorothy described as a “hay-stack scooped
out”. It was a simple circular, domed wooden hut, lined with ‘fog’, the Scots
language term for moss.When they got back to their Dove Cottage home in the Lake District, they built their own version with marvellous views over the fells and it was here that they entertained and William wrote poetry, including his masterpiece The Prelude. Like the hut they had seen in Scotland, it was lined
with moss and covered outside with heather with a long seat around the
interior - William described it as like a "wren’s nest" and even wrote a little poem about it:
No whimsy of the
purse is here,
No Pleasure-House forlorn;
Use, Comfort do this roof endear;
A tributary Shed to cheer
The little Cottage that is near,
To help it and adorn.
Bad news, the hut was demolished by a later owner, the writer Thomas de Quincey and there are no images of it surviving. Good news, in 2020
a replacement hut was built by designer Charlie Whinney (featured previously on Shedworking) in collaboration with natural world campaigners somewhere-nowhere out of Cumbrian oak at Dove Cottage along the same
nest-like lines as the original (see images above). It looks tremendous and it's hoped that it will inspire new generations of writers. All the pandemic stuff has rather got in the way of a proposed tour of the moss hut in the region, but it's in situ at Dove Cottage and there are hopes that once things improve it can hit the road in 2021.
Launching a new approach to working away from traditional offices during a time of a garden office revolution seems like a smart idea, not surprising when that idea comes from co-founder and CEO Leanne Beesley, the force behind the innovative Coworker.com.
So here is the newly-launched Nooka which claims to be the world’s first network of wifi-connected, fully equipped,
ergonomic garden offices. Each one comes with full workstation setup including a Steelcase electric height-adjustable desk and ergonomic chair, whiteboard, and smart heating/cooling system. There are various sizes 6m/5m/4m/3m x 3m x 3m, all with window walls, glass door (bi-fold for larger models), and attractive roof overhang, but its modular system makes things quite flexible. It comes in three colours, yellow, orange and pale blue.
There are certainly some interesting aspects of Nooka. For a start, instead of paying for your garden office all in one lump sum, they offer a lower
installation fee followed by a monthly subscription. Also, you can join the Nooka network and rent yours out to people locally (by day or hour) using its app, think Airbnb for garden offices. Alternatively, you can rent other Nookas yourself.
Nooka is a European company and currently all orders have been within Europe as they are not shipping to the US yet. It is producing its first orders
at its manufacturing facility in Romania, with deliveries starting in
March this year. The aim is to have approximately 50 "out in the wild" by
April available to rent, including some in the UK (COVID-related restrictions permitting).
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning
BBC Newsround presenter Ricky Boleto has been charting the makeover of his garden shed into a television studio on Twitter (see above for the before and after shots). Here's what the BBC says about it: "It's
kitted out with power, internet, neon lights that change colour, a
massive TV screen and lots of other gadgets to help him report on the
latest stories from home."
He's now put together a great little video about his new garden office which you can see on the BBC's Newsround site here.
It can be a walk around the block. It can be a stop at your local coffee
pickup counter or your favorite drive-thru. Many workers have replaced
their pre-coronavirus commutes with allotted time around work shifts
where they break away from what can be the monotony of working from
home, also known as the pretend or "fake commute." One woman told the Wall Street Journal she missed having a "clear dividing line in her weekday." Researchers recommend this practice as a means to fend off burnout.
Shedworking believes this is one of the important things to consider when shedworking, that although you don't have to fight your way through traffic jams or a crowded underground, it's still good to start the working day with a ceremonial commute. While it’s not usually the highlight of the day, it does at least effectively mark the border between home and work. So instead of cracking straight into it after breakfast, nip outside and have a brief wander. Not too long, this is merely taking the air and getting yourself in work mode, not exercise. It’s your 30 second commute.
In the third and final part of this excellent series by Helen Thornley, Technical Officer at
The Association of Taxation Technicians on accountingWEB (see here for the previous two) she looks a a wide range of issues including structures and buildings allowance, VAT, and what happens when you come to sell your house. Here's a snippet, talking about 'benefit in kind':
One approach would be to view the pod as an asset which has
been lent to the director and is available for their use, but to which
legal title has not been transferred. If the pod does not fall within
the special rules for living accommodation, then the general rules will
apply. The HMRC view
is that living accommodation is something that gives the occupant the
necessary facilities to live domestic life independently without
reliance on others to supply basic needs, so offices and workshops are
excluded.
In this case, unless the pod is hired, the cash equivalent
of the pod to be assessed each year as a benefit will be 20% of the
market value of the asset when first made available – most likely the
cost of the asset when new. This is likely to be more significant than
the benefit in kind for living accommodation and, if the pod is to be
kept long term, it might be better for the director who wants personal
use to pay to install it privately. In the first tax year, this benefit can be apportioned so
the individual is only taxed on the number of days since the pod was
first made available.
As with previous blog posts, this is well worth reading.
A tremendous garden office meeting room built for and by Outpost architecture and design studio based in London. Here's what they say about it:
"Our straw
room is a self-build project that highlights the ease of building with
natural building materials making it an affordable and accessible
solution for the UK’s housing needs. The walls are solely load bearing
straw bales, with then lime render to both the inside and outside
surfaces. This construction technique creates a building envelope that
has high thermal mass, high U-value of 0.1 and fantastic acoustic
qualities. All the materials we used (straw, sheeps wool, lime render
and timber) are low embodied energy materials that create an
architecture with health and well-being benefits over traditional
construction methods."
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning
An interesting article in the Belfast Telegraph reveals that prospective shedworkers in Ireland are in some cases having to wait up to 10 months for their new garden office as waiting lists grow.
Although there are plans to increase the numbers of co-working spaces, the garden office route remains a very popular one. The article gives a brief survey of garden office specialists and their waiting times including Shomera (pictured above) whose waiting list is now up to the end of October, Timber Living Log Cabins (May), and Ecohome Log Cabins Ireland (August). More details at the link above.
Those still looking for suppliers have ample resources to do so here on the Shedworking site but over the weekend Kat Burroughs at The Sunday Times put together a nice piece 'How to create a garden office' which also has a useful list and thoughts (£).
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Monday posts are sponsored by eDEN Garden Rooms. Stunning, bespoke high quality garden rooms, to suit your unique space and style
Here's our first snowy garden office post of 2021, belonging to friend of Shedworking teacher Tracy Goodyear. If you've got a photo of your snowy shed, let us know!
Peter Montgomery transformed his Cambridgeshire garage into a garden office bothy during lockdown last year and below is the video showing the transformation plus a tour of the shedworking space. You can read more about how Peter did it, including his use of recycled materials, on readersheds.
