L-shaped garden offices and buildings seem to be one of 2022's hottest shedworking trends. Here's another recent example from Booths Garden Studios which is quite a whopper but fine with the planning bods as its installed under the Caravan Act. In the video below, Alex Booth guides us round.
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Two tremendous examples of interior shedworking at Altrincham-based Aquarium who are specialists in pet insurance software. These are two of their meeting rooms inside the main building, The Doghouse and Beach Hut.
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Here's a classic garden office design, in fact an ex-display Studio Apex from Malvern Garden Buildings, Its happy owner is the hugely talented singer Oliver Darley, a former NME Male Vocalist of the Year who lives in Surrey with his partner the novelist Charlotte Duckworth. Features include additional insulation to help with soundproofing and acoustics.
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In today's guest post we welcome writer Steven Mitchell who lives a stone's throw from Shedworking HQ. He talks us through his garden office journey.
I’m a writer, and like my childhood hero, Roald Dahl, I’ve always wanted a writing shed, and now I have one! With child number two on the way, we decided we needed a bit more space, so we started looking at new houses. One house immediately drew me in because the estate agent’s photos showed a garden office. When we went to view it, I knew this was the place. The garden office was tucked away in the back corner of the garden, half submerged in bushes, a palm tree beside the door, and in the shade of an enormous chestnut tree bulging with adolescent fruit. I imagined myself in there, furiously working on my next novel. We made an offer on the house the next day.
Now I’ve moved into the shed, I often pause to breathe in the greenery as a breeze rustles the leaves and rain falls gently on the shed roof. It’s more peaceful than I’d imagined. I write early in the morning or late at night and I feel like I’m truly alone. I have a lovely oak desk, a comfy brown leather chair, and pictures on the wall. It’s cosy, but I’ve only experienced it in the summer so I’m bracing for autumn and winter. I’ll probably be typing in fingerless gloves, bobble hat on my head, wrapped tight in a blanket while chestnuts thunder down onto the roof.
A fox visits the garden, a squirrel often scampers past the door, and one evening, as I returned to the house, I almost tripped over a hedgehog as it scurried across the lawn. In my second week in the shed, I heard scratching in the corner of the shed, a noise coming from outside, driving me to distraction. I stuck my head out to see a parade of wasps going in and out of a hole. Thankfully, they’ve gone, and I have my peace back.
I’m going to do my best writing here—my award-winning work—I just know it. I wish I’d had this space when writing my first novel, Under The Moss—perhaps the boost of an inspiring place to write might have boosted sales. But it’s not just a writing shed—it’s my den. If I need a break, I have my guitars and electric drum kit (I’d love to swap it for my real one, but I have yet to convince my partner of that), which I thrash upon dreaming of being a rockstar (only one of my bands made it to Spotify (Double Handsome Dragons—check it out).
I wish everyone could find their own space like this, and if I finally hit on the formula for writing a bestseller here, I’ll share the secret.
And a quick plug…if you buy Under The Moss direct from my publisher’s website, they’ll plant a tree. Or you can buy it from your favourite bookshop, and they’ll still plant a tree but maybe not a whole one.
We do cover greenhouse garden office possibilities from time to time on Shedworking but maybe we should be looking into it a bit more thoroughly. Lancashire-based glasshouse/greenhouse specialist Hartley Botanic has announced its predictions for 2023 based on recent customer behaviour. Among them are thoughts on less horticultural-specific uses (pictured above, its 'Calm and Wellbeing' 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show tradestand).
They quite rightly point out that he mental health benefits of gardening and enjoying our green spaces is now well understood and customers are extending this further into how they use and design their greenhouses. Naturally, this could mean more people working from home in glass-based builds.
“We foresee more customers specifically buying and using their glasshouses and greenhouses for wellness reasons in 2023," said CEO Tom Barry. "This is something we have been noticing over the last few years,
as customers experienced the benefits first hand of spending more time in their garden spaces. People want
to make the most of this and will be consciously organising their greenhouses – whether in their design or
‘grow your own’ usage – for this purpose.”
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A tremendous thread of allotment shed images from the Garden Museum on Twitter. Well worth a click.
SHEDS: we are back with another Friday photo selection, this week we salute the humble garden shed 🧑🌾
— Garden Museum (@GardenMuseumLDN) September 23, 2022
1. Allotment gardeners, c.1910 pic.twitter.com/Z8OH2QJ5tM
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Uncle Wilco, the founder of Shed of the Year and readersheds.co.uk, has recently got some iconic ink done. Here's what he says about the experience. "The most consistent thing in my life for the past 20 has been #sheds, so it's only fitting that my first tattoo is one.
I'm never subtle, so it's a tongue in cheek nod to the claim that I'm the shed king."
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It's been a while since we've seen a floating garden office on Shedworking but this is a particularly attractive one. 'Betsy' is owned by novelist and book publicist Georgina Moore. As you can see it's still not quite finished but it looks tremendous.
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A garden office blending well into a very attractive setting in Aberlady on the East Lothian coast of Scotland, not far from Edinburgh. Built by Outside In Garden Rooms, it's 4.2m at its widest at the front, and then narrows a little to fit into the space. Features include aluminium bi-fold doors and landscaping by Imrie's Garden Solutions.
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We usually think of shedworkers as being one-person bands, but that's becoming quite an outdated concept now as hybrid working really kicks in and garden offices have become a normal feature of working life. So it's also important to recognise that employers as much as employees have need of a decent shedworking space. There's an interesting article on just this subejct at Raconteur called 'Remote control: the rise of the hybrid CEO'. Here's a snippet:
Anita Williams Woolley, professor of organizational behaviour and theory at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, agrees. “You can still be a role model if employees have access to you,” she says. “You don’t need to be in a specific physical location. If companies are committed to hybrid working, then it can be more effective if CEOs are also working in the same fashion. It will ensure that all systems and processes work well. It could be an issue for some employees if they see their boss working remotely and they have been denied the option to do so themselves.”
Well worth a read.
Image courtesy Moonalabs
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Irish film and television director and screenwriter John Carney (Once, Sing Street, Bachelors Walk, Modern Love) has been a shedworker for the last few years but is now selling up his home in Dublin and moving on. This means his rather impressive timber and brick garden office - pictured above with its corner fireplace, and where he wrote Modern Love and Sing Street - is now on the market, stained douglas fir cladding and all. It comes with a three bedroom house and mature gardens and is on with Sherry FitzGerald for €1,275,000.
My Writing Shed is not technically a garden office but still a very worthwhile new shedworkingesque undertaking in Central Illinois which aims to provide a helpful habitat for writers, classes, workshops, and general positive support. Here's what they say about themselves:
"Founded by writers, for writers. We recognized a need in the Peoria community for a designated physical space for writers to work, take classes and attend workshops, learn about industry practices and news, and support each other in our writing endeavors."
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Mark Burton from Tiny House UK has been spreading the word about the delights of microarchitecture in general and tiny houses in particular, most recently appearing in a programme on South Korea's KBS World channel.
"The team travelled over from South Korea as they were reporting on a similar housing crisis in Korea," says Mark. "In this short video, one of our Tiny House Cabins is featured at the very beginning, there's a short inside peak of our workshops, and a short piece with Homefolk who we are partnering with and building a Tiny House Village in London."
Tiny House Uk on KBS TV-Korea from Mark Burton on Vimeo.
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There's been a lot of screaming and shouting in some of the media who, for various reasons, are opposed to the move towards shedworking, working from home in particular, and hybrid working in general. The Telegraph in particular has been arguing that the increase in energy bills is going to mean it'll be cheaper to go back to the traditional commute - its "analysis" claimed that working from home will mean £2,500+ a year rises in energy bills, and that commuters would save £1,500 by heading back to the office.
Not so say various expert independent commentators. Here's what Full Fact concludes:
This figure comes from a flawed calculation, which assumes that the cost of energy used each month is as high as it is in January... In short, although people’s commuting costs will vary widely—from almost nothing to several thousand pounds—the Telegraph’s calculations do not reliably show that on average people who commute to work “are still likely to be better off by £1,500”, or indeed that commuting to work will on average be cheaper than working from home and paying additional energy costs.
And here's Channel 4's Fact Check:
Using the limited evidence available, we tentatively estimate that working from home would add about £50 a month to energy bills between October and December – though the precise amount will depend on a range of factors. If our calculations are right, workers in many parts of the country may find the extra energy bills are still lower than the cost of commuting to work.
There's a good article about the debate at the Guardian by Jane Parry, Can the working from home model survive the energy crisis?
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A lovely piece of work by artist, photographer, illustrator and shedworker Cathy MacLennan showing her very attractive garden office in which she works. For those not familiar with the process, cyanotype is "a slow-reacting, economical photographic printing formulation sensitive to a limited near ultraviolet and blue light spectrum... it produces a cyan-blue print used for art as monochrome imagery". There are more examples on Cathy's website and friend of Shedworking Chris Routledge's too.
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My favourite find from this year's annual Roald Dahl Day yesterday was a charming animation by animation director/writer and storyboard artist (Pixar, Aardman, Netflix) Matt Jones which I'd not come across before. Here's what he says about it:
I found footage of Dahl talking about his writing hut and creative process and thought his wonderful voice would make him the perfect narrator for an animated version. All creatives need their own writing hut; a creative space whether it’s a corner in a cafe or a private studio- it’s a place to think and dream without distraction.
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We talk on here sometimes about the place of music in the shedworking environment. We've also talked about why it's good to have plants in your garden office and also the benefits of looking out onto a garden rather than a skyscraper. But what if there were some way of combining them?
There is now, thanks to a new company Moodsonic which has put together a programme of natural audio soundscapes or what they call "biophilic design for the ears". Here's what they say about it:
"It harnesses our innate preferences for nature to create workspaces that are more healthy, productive and agile. Research shows that natural sounds can mask distracting noise and promote optimal cognitive functioning – even better than silence. They can decrease our muscle tension and heart-rate and help us feel safe and secure. They can even cue our bodies’ circadian rhythms. Moodsonic uses science-led design to bring these benefits to workplaces, schools, healthcare and more."
In practical terms, this is essentially how the calming sounds of nature such as rivers and rain can have a major impact on cognitive performance, even better they argue than silence.
Naturally they've done some research which they suggest indicates:
Moodsonic’s biophilic soundscape increased relaxation responses in people compared to typical office sound, based on both heart-rate and alpha brainwave data
Participants completed cognitive tasks significantly more quickly in the Moodsonic soundscape condition without loss of accuracy
Participants scored higher in creative thinking (+ 12%) with Moodsonic compared to typical office sound
Image courtesy Moonalabs
A survey by workplace health, wellbeing and ergonomics company Posturite indicates that only 48% of people who work from home have a
designated room for doing so. Its figures show that 7% of people work from a garden office, with a dedicated study/home office in the house the most popular at 41%, followed by a spare bedroom at 21%, then pretty much every other home in the house. The problem with working at a kitchen table or in the living room is that you almost certainly are damaging your body in the process as a result of poor posture.
Katharine Metters, Lead Consultant in Ergonomics at Posturite, said: “Working from home should be as well set up and comfortable as working in an office and standard home furniture, such as a sofa or dining chair, is not designed to support the body in a suitable position for inputting into a computer. Setting your home office up in an ergonomic way is vital to your effectiveness and to limit the risk of aches, pains and injuries.”
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