Friday Finery: Hexagonal arcaded tower

 

 

Admittedly the latest in our occasional series of Friday Finery will need a little work to turn it into a fully fledged garden office, but the potential is there for all to see. It's what Lassco call "an Oxford spire", a Victorian hexagonal arcaded tower made from oak, pine and lead which last saw service on the Walter Bodmer Building at the University of Oxford before it was, totally legally, salvaged. Features include that spired roof, copper lightening conductor (not something you see every day on a garden office), lead cap and cedar shingles, with an arcaded cupola around a central post and lead-covered base-plate. It comes in at 5m hight by 1.85m wide (excluding lightening conductor).

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

UK Men's Sheds Shed of the Year

Although there is the longstanding Shed of the Year competition (entries for this year's iteration close next Wednesday), other shed competitions are available, particularly the one organised by the UK Men's Sheds Association which in the tenth year of its operation has announed the winner of its annual award at at ceremony in the House of Lords.

Sponsored by Tite-Fix, this year they had five categories recognising contributions to community, health and wellbeing, partnerships, and supporting each other. The awards were hosted by Paralympic star Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson with Maria Cauldfield MP as guest speaker. 

Congratulations to the overall winner, Bootle Tool Shed (pictured above), but congratulations to all those who won awards: 

Long Sutton Men’s Shed – Shed Community Project of the Year 

Gareth Lloyd Kessingland Shed – Shed Volunteer of the Year 

Lancaster Men’s Shed – Shed Health and Wellbeing Impact of the Year

Cotswold Community Shed of the Year – Shed Partnership of the Year

Mike Jenn Camden - Blue Plaque

Patrick Abrahams – UKMSA Chairman’s Award

Chris Griffiths – UKMSA Chairman’s Award

Tony Smith-Crallan – UKMSA Chairman’s Award

Rob Lloyd Chairman of UK Men’s Sheds Association said: "Each and every nomination this year deserved an award. These Sheds demonstrate everything that is great about Men’s Sheds.” 

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

 

Glasshouses at Chelsea Flower Show

Among the stands to drop by and have a browse at this year's Chelsea Flower Show is Hartley Botanic's. Although more towards the greenhouse end of the market, these are versatile spaces and can also make decent garden offices. Pictured above is their tradestand this year which displays four of the manufacturer’s handmade greenhouses including:
 
* The Opus Botanic Glasshouse in Country Stone - The largest glasshouse on this year’s tradestand with wider glass panes to give a modern look and feel 

* The Victorian Villa Glasshouse in Verona Stone - A Victorian aesthetic, with an extra door in the left and right gable ends  

* The Victorian Chelsea Glasshouse in Olive Leaf - A glass to ground design, the show model features roof blinds to both front and rear 

* The Wisley 8 Grow & Store Greenhouse in Black Olive - Includes a useful, partitioned two-pane storage area. 
 
Tom Barry, CEO of Hartley Botanic said: “Our choice of structures for this year’s tradestand, and choice of lighter colours, is a reflection of current customer tastes. We are noticing that customers are increasingly opting for light, fresh colours such as stone, pale olive and white. The structures are also more restrained in size this year which is in keeping with current pressures for all consumers."

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SMART designs and manufactures industry leading garden rooms from our very own Suffolk factory and installed all over mainland UK

The best Show Garden buildings at Chelsea Flower Show 2023

If you're going to Chelsea Flower Show this week, here are our top tips about what to look for in terms of shedlike structures in the Show Gardens area. Sadly garden offices are again rather overlooked but there are still some marvellous builds to enjoy. First up (above) is the ‘mushroom den’ made from a reclaimed steel-clad shipping container in the Centre for Mental Health's 'The Balance Garden'.

Enjoy the stone cairns in Horatio's Garden but feast your eyes on the organic garden pod (above) which the RHS says "provides a cocooning place for physical and emotional shelter".

Here's the lovely Myeloma UK - A Life Worth Living Garden featuring two splendid Neoclassical-style temples, built on a timber frame and clad in a fabric printed to look like the render of an Italian chapel.

The RBC Dolphin Brewin Garden (above) features a hand-built oak pavilion structure with bespoke metalwork roof. And finally (below) perhaps the only structure that could be labelled a 'garden office', The Royal Entomological Society Garden which features an outdoor laboratory built into a hillside, a space in which to perform scientific research (after the show it's going to IQL Stratford in East London to be used for just that) with a remarkable bright blue domed roof inspired by an insect eye

Outside the Show Gardens, in the Sanctuary Gardens area look out for The Biophilic Garden Otsu - Hanare featureing this excellent 'hanare', a small house separated from the main building (that sounds a familiar description...).

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Malvern Garden Buildings offer a premium collection of garden buildings, displayed at 11 UK showsites.

Plankbridge Bothy at Chelsea Flower Show

One of the garden buildings you're going to see a lot of in the media coverage of this year's Chelsea Flower Show is the RHS Bothy from Plankbridge (almost inevitably described as 'covetable' by many journalists). The new design is a collaboration between the two and is launched in the middle of the Great Pavilion, "perfect as a home office, garden retreat, music room or art studio" according to the RHS.

It's part of the ‘Women in Hortculture’ displayand  is made entirely in home-grown UK timber, with sweet chestnut windows, door and internal wall lining, a potting bench-inspired desk made from ash, and an ash floor with a neutral ash finish. Details include replicas of Gertrude Jekyll motif sketches housed in the RHS Lindley Library Collections, desk brackets forged over Dorset charcoal which were based on the boot scraper outside RHS Wisley's Arts & Crafts Old Laboratory, and the whole thing is painted in Farrow and Ball's Brinjal.

Alos look out for Plankbridge's tradestand AR 640  in Ranelagh Gardens.

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Monday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, contemporary living spaces offering premium quality, bespoke buildings without the hefty price tag

 

House Plant Studios at RHS Chelsea

As we've mentioned before, as well as the occasional shedlike structure in the show gardens at Chelsea Flower Show returning again next week for its 2023 iteration visitors should look around for other garden offices and studios. One spot to head for is the Houseplant Studios area on the Plateau where Malvern Garden Buildings are again working with the RHS to provide six garden buildings offering visitors  greenfingerd and shedworkingesque inspiration. In brief, these include:

* Beards & Daisies: Plant School which will look at environmental education for children

* Botanical Boys, a space for busy professionals when they get home and need to recharge.

* Tropical Plants UK: Keep Calm, Grow British, a studio full of products from British brands

* The Language of Plants offers a new typeface incorporating the form of leaves and stems, while the planting of the pavilion is mixed with tropical and arid growing species.  

* Geb & Green: Steam. Clean. Plant. Repeat focuses on how the UK houseplant industry could be more environmentally friendly

Each studio will be putting on live sessions with houseplant experts throughout the show.

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

 

 

New Plankbridge 'Standard'

Plankbridge is introducing a new, lower cost offering called the 'Standard' (pictured above). Cofounder Richard Lee says that he's been contemplating the move for a while as he does not want price to be a barrier to a customer with a decent budget but at the same time can’t afford their full spec (eg. full designer kitchen).

"This year feels the right time to introduce a pared-back aesthetic," he says, "offering our well-known shepherd’s huts with exactly the same build method, insulation and design knowledge. But in place of an engineered oak floor, the new ‘Plankbridge Standard’ offers a solid redwood pine floor, in a scrubbed finish, painted windows and doors and a kitchen with stylish open shelves rather than glass-fronted wall cupboards."

These, and a few other clever design tweaks, could knock about £10k off an 18’ en-suite Cabin model, for example, but the same approach can be applied to any of their hut models. If you're interested, contact them via the link above for more information.

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SMART designs and manufactures industry leading garden rooms from our very own Suffolk factory and installed all over mainland UK

Home cinema and chill out garden room (video)

Sussex-based Urban Escape Studios designed and built this large entertaining space for relaxing, incluing a home cinema, a bespoke version of their Abri model. It comes in at  5.4m x 3.2m with a 600mm overhang, and a matching anthracite grey timber pergola (5m x 2m).

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Malvern Garden Buildings offer a premium collection of garden buildings, displayed at 11 UK showsites.

Cabbies' shelters and posties' huts in new Idler

Issue 90 of the Idler magazine is out now and it's the most widely distributed to date so do look out for in Waitrose, WH Smiths, Waterstones, etc, or even better take out a subscription here. My regular column on shedlike structures looks at the marvellous cabbies' shelters (mainly in London but also elsewhere in the UK) and postmen's and postwomen's huts which are being researched by Alan Cleaver. Here's a snippet on the shelters (pictured below is the Northumberland Avenue shelter, courtesy Ethan Doyle White):

Most of the busy people in busy London have probably never noticed the baker’s dozen of cabmen’s shelters that survive in the capital. But these 19^th Grade II listed delights boast a long history as well as intriguing architecture, and we have the The Cabmen’s Shelter Fund (CSF) to thank for them.

 

This 1875 charity, still operational today, was established in 1875 to give Victorian hansom cabbies a much-needed resting point. It was illegal for them to leave their cabs unattended in the rank, so when they needed somewhere warm and dry to put their feet up briefly and grab a bite to eat, they often headed to a pub. But this was costly – they would have to pay a good citizen to keep an eye out on it to prevent its theft – and also, drinking and driving are not fine bedfellows.

 

Enter Sir George Carlyon Hughes Armstrong, Bart, the hugely successful managing editor of The Globe newspaper. His idea was to provide a permanent wooden shelter for cabbies on the ranks and so established the CSF. Designs varied over the years – the first one was even moveable – but the green ornamental ones drawn up by architect Maximillian Clarke  which have weathered the last 150 years are particularly aesthetically pleasing. Early funding came from philanthropists but others were financed through local neighbourhood residents. Although the London shelters are the most common, similar buildings (built along similar architectural lines) were also set up outside London in places like Bradford, Ripon, and Newcastle.

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

 

 

Retreats for the Soul: book review

On this bright day, where the weather is getting pleasant again, we can show you how you can spend these fleeting moments of warm spring sun. Above, you can see the idyllic scene used for the front cover of new book, Retreats for the Soul. Content creators Sara Bird and Dan Duchars, collectively known as the CONTENTed Nest, have showcased their experience and knowledge of interior design in this charming display of hideaways and retreats, including numerous shedlike structures. The book, which came out earlier this month published by Ryland Peters & Small, tells the reader about the essentials of a place of your own and then it goes into more detail about 15 different retreats, ranging from a circus wagon to a fishing lodge. This 176 page book is designed to inspire and show off these picturesque hideaways, and it does a very good job of it.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

 

Garden office properties in Sandwich and Shoreham-on-Sea

Today we're bringing you two fine garden offices attached to properties on the market. Above, an insulated studio/workshop in a beautiful cottage rear garden in Shoreham-on-Sea with Robert Luft who are looking for OIEO £600,000 for this and the adjoinging cobble-fronted Grade II listed 18th century cottage.

Below is this studio in 100ft of south facing rear garden in Dover Road, Sandwich on with Regal Estates. Comes with a three bedroom detached house for £495,000. 

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SMART designs and manufactures industry leading garden rooms from our very own Suffolk factory and installed all over mainland UK

Beauty/hair salon garden offices

 

Talking to a number of garden office suppliers recently, one of the current trends seems to be the rise in the number of shedworkers starting up their own hair salons and beauty treatment businesses from buildings in their back gardens.

Among them are Swift who say this about this growth: "A garden salon will provide you with the perfect place to work your magic, without some of the downsides of paying for a full business property. A bespoke garden room can provide you with the perfect self-contained, versatile space to run your business from home.  Whether you are branching out into a new venture, opening your first salon, or already have an established business and clientele and are looking at different possibilities, investing in your own garden salon can make a lot of sense."

There are of course additional considerations that you need to look into, such as any increased traffic in and around your home (check with the local council), insurance (check with mortgage lender), plus all the usual business issues such as health and safety.

Images courtesy of Swift. 

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Malvern Garden Buildings offer a premium collection of garden buildings, displayed at 11 UK showsites.

'The Brain' garden office

There are garden offices and then there are garden offices. This spectacular example from Seattle-based Olson Kundig (click for more excellent interior photos) is called The Brain and is described as a "cinematic laboratory" for a film-maker. It's built from concrete and features a steel mezzanine.  Here's how the architects describe it:

"The double-height single room of the main space is inserted with a loft constructed entirely of 1/2-inch steel plates that are welded and folded in an “origami” fashion in order to produce the rigidity and strength need to become structurally self-sufficient. A set of stairs to the loft is hidden behind a darkroom and storage space is tucked beneath the steel loft, while a fireman’s pole provides an easier and more flamboyant means of egress down."

They add that it is "as much a treehouse, fort, and playroom as it is a serious work space".

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

 

 

 

Garden office creative writing space

An attractive space for a writer from Hove-based Urban Escapes. It's 4.2m x 3.2m plus overhang, with  Crittal-style doors and windows, and features the increasingly popular ‘shou sugi ban’ charred wood  cladding.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

 

Herb drying tower at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Our look at shedlike structures at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show continues with the A Letter from a Million Years Past from Korean artist Jihae Hwang whose garden's important message is all about stopping landscape destruction for the benefit of people, plants and places via an evocation of the Jiri Mountains in South Korea, home to1,500 species of native Korean plants that have medicinal value, many of which have been threatened with extinction.

The central point of the garden will be a traditional Korean herb drying tower, crafted by Alex Gibbons from Cumbria. Alex is one of the remaining craftspeople in the UK who creates earth-buildings, using mud, straw and sand to build bespoke creations. The tower references similar buildings in South Korea, used to dry and store herbs.

At the end of the show, some of the plants from the garden will be donated to the Maggie’s Centre in Nottingham. 

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SMART designs and manufactures industry leading garden rooms from our very own Suffolk factory and installed all over mainland UK

Garden office on rail tracks

A remarkable build from major Seattle architects Olson Kundig, Maxon Office is a two-storey garden office on the grounds of a home which is linked to the main building by 15ft gauge rail tracks. This means it can be moved nearer or further away as desired, a nod to the local area's rail history. The main work area is on the ground floor, while up a ladder to the first floor is more of a creative 'chill' zone.

Features include steel and wood walls, built-in desks, and a stabilising bar element that stops it falling over in case there's an earthquake

Lots more photos at the always intriguing dezeen 

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Malvern Garden Buildings offer a premium collection of garden buildings, displayed at 11 UK showsites.

Get 50% off Work From Shed

We reviewed the excellent Work From Shed from Hoxton Mini Press almost exactly a year ago. For the next 24 hours (until 10am on Tuesday morning) you can buy it at a remarkable 50% off (so just £12.50) if you click this link which takes you to the right page on their site (we don't get a cut, we're just being nice). Here's what they say about it:

Now that spring has sprung, why not find some inspiration at the end of your garden? Gone are the days of needing to commute to an office to cultivate your creativity. From visually arresting structures that transform the experience of working to plant-covered studios built in harmony with nature, discover just what can be built in a backyard. Why commute to an office when you can Work From Shed?

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Monday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, contemporary living spaces offering premium quality, bespoke buildings without the hefty price tag