Friday Finery: Chelsea Flower Show 2026

There were plenty of garden offices, sheds, and other shedlike structures at Chelsea Flower Show which I visited yesterday. Three highlights for you, plus a recommendation to get along if you can at all as there is so much to see there. First of all, something I think we can all get behind, The Old Shed Key Bottle Opener.

 

Next, my favourite build of the show, The Composer's Cabin by Malvern Garden Buildings which we've mentioned a couple of times before this year on Shedworking. 

And finally, something every shedworker should have on their decking/terrace, a remarkably comfortable swing seat from Raw Studio.

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New garden room design from Booths Garden Studios (video)

Three useful videos as an introduction to Booths Garden Studios' new garden room design.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master, bespoke garden rooms and offices designed, manufactured and installed throughout the UK 

The Composer's Cabin

The Shedworking team will be travelling to RHS Chelsea Flower Show tomorrow and will report back with sheddish structures on our return, but in the meantime large congratulations to the folk behind The Composer's Cabin pictured above, designed by Martha Krempel, sponsored by London St Pancras Highspeed, and all set in a Malvern Garden Buildings build as part of the Houseplant Studios section it is sponsoring again this year. Features include a swing-seat, a Steinway piano, and rather nice windows to the side. 

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Scottish Men’s Shed of the Year’ Awards 2026

The search is on for Scottish Men’s Shed of the Year 2026 recognising the role sheds play in supporting men’s health, wellbeing, and connection across the country.

SMSA CEO Jason Schroeder said: “Our awards programme has come a long way since it first launched back in 2019, just like the movement itself. Today, we’re immensely proud to now support more than 12,000 men, all volunteers, across over 210 open or developing Shed groups in every one of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas.

“We want to hear your Shed’s story through the Awards application and celebrate the incredible work you’ve delivered over the past 12 months and give it the recognition it deserves.”

The awards will again recognise excellence across five regional categories:
    •    East Coast (North)
    •    East Coast (South)
    •    West Coast (North)
    •    West Coast (South)
    •    Highlands & Islands
Each region will crown its own winner, with all five progressing into the running for the national title. From there, the SMSA board will select three finalists who will go forward to a public vote to decide the overall winner.

Applications close June 30, winner announced August 28.

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Monday's posts are sponsored by Smart Modular Buildings, the UK's best garden room company

 

Friday Finery: Plankbridge at Chelsea

RHS Chelsea Flower Show is approaching and Plankbridge will be celebrating the construction of its 700th shepherd's hut by bringing along one of its vintage models, now nearly 10 years old to their display at Stand RA644. It's a 14ft traditionally proportioned model lent by its owners for the show. Features include a double bed, kitchen, and fold-down table/desk.

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

Cake shed controversy

Around the country the latest trend in shed-based businesses is Cake Sheds, small, often self-service, wooden sheds/huts which offer homemade baked goods on a commercial but more informal level. 

However, local newspapers have been reporting on various issues arising from them in terms of approval/interference from local authorities. 

Among these is Bassetlaw District Council in Nottinghamshirehas which has reconsidered its current approach to the licensing of ‘Cake Sheds and Cupboards’ following feedback from residents across the district.

The Council has now paused enforcement of its Street Trader Policy where it specifically relates to ‘Cake Sheds and Cupboards’ while the Licensing Committee considers the wider implications of the policy on potential traders and members of the public.

This means that residents who trade using ‘Cake Sheds and Cupboards’ on their own land will be able to continue to do so without a licence until further notice. 

Cllr June Evans, Cabinet Member for Governance, which includes Legal and Licensing, said: “We have seen the public reaction to the introduction of this policy and the impact that it could potentially have on residents who provide ‘cake sheds or cupboards’. We also recognise the community benefit these enterprises can have in some areas.

“Having considered our current approach, we have decided to pause all enforcement action that relates specifically to ‘cake sheds and cupboards’ while this part of the Street Trader Policy can be reviewed by our Licensing Committee, including any fees and charges.

“The Street Trader Policy still remains in place as it guides and licenses other forms of street trading throughout the district. We will also continue to monitor the situation, especially where we receive complaints from members of the public that relate specifically to ‘cake sheds and cupboards’, and where there could be serious concerns raised around their impact on other members of a community, food safety and hygiene, and issues including electrical, gas or fire risks."

Image courtesy of The Cake Place Cake Shed, Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan

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Studio #1

A lovely build by Freddy Tuppen with Willem Hampson and Will Thomson for a garden office in East London which is carefully built around a tree and its roots. Features include  ground screw foundations, wood fibre insulation, untreated timber, a clerestory window, large front-facing windows, and a lightwell surrounding the tree. Inside are tailormade furnishings include a Shedworking favourite, a day bed. Lots more atmospheric photos at the link above.

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New exhibition focuses on architect Wenche Selmer’s ideas about simple cabins

Oslo's National Museum of Norway's new exhibition - Wenche Selmer: What Can You Live Without? - looks at Norwegian architect Wenche Selmer who cultivated an ideal of a rich life lived with simple means using drawings, notes, photography and a full size cabin.

Running until October 4, the exhibtion concentrates on the Norwegian cabins and wooden houses that Wenche Selmer (1920–1998) designed as part of her approach to architecture; she regarded the cabin as a metaphor for a simple, good life, asking her clients “What can you live without?”.

The museum has made use of the exhibition space's considerable size by installing a full-scale version of Selmer’s prototype Beach house cabin inside the exhibition. Visitors can enter the cabin, go upstairs, and even lie down on the bed.

Pictured above, the full-scale cabin, photo by Andreas Harvik. Top image: Summer House for Aarnæs (1952) photo by Jens Selmer. 

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Monday's posts are sponsored by Smart Modular Buildings, the UK's best garden room company

Friday Finery: Sheds at RHS Malvern

There's a new RHS judged category at the Malvern Spring Festival this year called Floral Tablescaping. Floral designers have been competing to style the interior of a garden shed with attractive table settings inside, themes including 'woodland restaurant', 'fairytale woodlands' and ';storybook settings'. More images here - the show continues until Sunday.

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

 

Garden offices a key way to avoid work distractions, says new study

A new study from Durham Business School warns that remote working can damage work-life balance, wellbeing, and productivity unless clear boundaries are in place.

It found that interruptions at home - what they call “cross-domain interruptions” such as domestic tasks - can disrupt focus and recommends that people can reduce interruptions by creating a defined workspace, such as a garden office, rather than working from shared areas like the kitchen table. Other suggestions included taking proper breaks to rest and reset, rather than using that time for household chores. 

The study analysed daily diary entries from 87 remote workers across sectors including teaching, finance, IT and public administration. The findings reveal a pattern of rising stress and a greater need for recovery when work was interrupted by home life. Workers also reported lower levels of wellbeing. Blurred boundaries also made it harder for employees to switch off at the end of the day.

Image courtesy Smart Modular Buildings

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master, bespoke garden rooms and offices designed, manufactured and installed throughout the UK 

 

Coppice Sauna

Shepherd's hut specialist Plankbridge still produce a marvellously elegant shepherd's hut, but in recent years as regular Shedworking readers know the Dorset-based hutters have expanded their offering into other hut-shaped builds such as tack rooms and garden privvies.

This new offering, the Coppice Sauna, comes in at at 2m x 2m, and is clad in black-painted timber (inside it's Scandinavian aspen lining), coming with a large window and glazed door. As you'd expect there is a two-tiered timber seating inside with an 8kw electric stove, a spruce ceiling, and fully insulated 70mm wall cavity to ensure a smashing sauna experiece.

It also comes in an off-grid version, fitted with a wood-fired sauna unit and solar panels. Decking is an optional extra.

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Wednesday posts are sponsored by Booths Garden Studios, the UK's No.1 supplier of zero maintenance and portable garden studios

 

The Philosophy of Sheds is published today

Available everywhere good books are sold, ideally from your local independent bookseller, and online at the likes of Blackwells. It's published by those fine folk at the British Library who have this to say about it:

At a time when it feels like every year buildings get larger and more impersonal, sheds remain a beacon of ergonomic simplicity. Maybe it's the nostalgia of the ancient huts from which humanity evolved, or the sense of focused calm produced by shutting yourself away in one, but around the world and across generations we have found comfort in our sheds. They are wooden repositories for our inner lives: cheap, multifunctional spaces ready to be filled with the passions, tools and ideas of the individual.

In these pages you'll find rotating sheds, sheds on wheels and holy sheds, as Alex Johnson uncovers the universal lure of these tiny structures. Also detailed are some of the big ideas these little huts have birthed, from inventions and philosophies to literature, art and increasingly eccentric answers to the question: what exactly can a shed be? The Philosophy of Sheds also includes a gazetteer of famous and unique sheds of the world and is illustrated with archival imagery from the British Library collections.

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Monday's posts are sponsored by Smart Modular Buildings, the UK's best garden room company

Friday Finery: Writer's Retreat

An idyllic treehouse writer's retreat by Richmond Bell Architects with a a frameless window which has an extremely distracting view and a total floor area of 18m² . Sustainable larch from Dorset is used inside and out with a cedar shingle roof, and reclaimed chapel floorboards were used for the bookcase wall. There's a hidden door behind the bookcase leading on to a wraparound raised walkway.

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A Wagon in the Woods by James Aldred

One for The Shedworker's Bookshelf, this is former winner of the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing James Aldred's account of restoring an old horse-drawn wagon in which he played as a child in the New Forest 40 years previously. It also looks at the natural history of the forest, the Romani families who used to live there, and present day inhabitants including otters and goshawks (Aldred is a wildlife cameraman who has worked closely with David Attenborough who celebrates his 100th birthday next week the day after this book is published).

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master, bespoke garden rooms and offices designed, manufactured and installed throughout the UK 

Green roof pioneer Nigel Dunnett dies at 63

The Shedworking team was sorry to hear of the death over the weekend of horticulturalist and writer Nigel Dunnett. We have featured several of Nigel's Chelsea Flower Show creations over the years, and reviewed his marvellous book Small Green Roofs which featured many garden offices and other shedlike atmospheres when it came out in 2011 from Timber Press (sadly it's now out of print but still available secondhand) with helpful practical 'how to' sections. The green roof movement and biodiversity was one of his passions, establishing the first trials of them in the UK, and writing what is 

We are sad to hear of the passing of Nigel Dunnett who was a key figure in UK Green Roof research and teaching, and wrote what is believed to be the first book in English on the subject, with Noel Kingsbury, Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls, also a Timber Press publication.

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Monday's posts are sponsored by Smart Modular Buildings, the UK's best garden room company

 

 

Friday Finery: Garden library

This week's Finery is the marvellously idyllic garden library/writing shed of novelist Ova Ceren who also runs the extremely popular BookTok and Instagram channels @excusemyreading where you can find lots more atmospheric images of the interior and exterior.

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

 

Retirement garden study

It's never too late to get a garden office. Here's an example from Eden Garden Rooms of a bespoke 5.35m x 3.45m reading room-come-office with patio seating area outside for retired clients in Cobham, Surrey, to enjoy their delightful garden.

Built on the footprint of an old summerhouse that had seen better days, features include plent of desk and storage space, two floor to ceiling windows on the sides of a central set of French doors, a small letterbox window for additional light and ventilation, a slim panel heater and oak effect laminate flooring. The whole thing is clad in cedar with integrated spotlights on the canopy.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master, bespoke garden rooms and offices designed, manufactured and installed throughout the UK 

 

Beach hut makeover on BBC

The latest series of the BBC's Interior Design Masters series got underway last night with the 10 hopeful contestants charged with doing up their own beach huts in Mudeford (not the ludicrously expensive ones, just the normal variety). Plenty of interesting ideas for decorating your own shedlike atmosphere such as the one above which was the Shedworking team's favourite. Well worth a watch.

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Garden office timelapse

We haven't had a good time lapse garden office build for quite some time so sit back and enjoy this (it has rather a nice soundtrack too) from Humble Home Reno:

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Friday Finery: Writer's shepherd's hut garden office

For this week's Finery, a detail from a Blackdown Shepherds Hut build called Feathers for writer Beth Kempton into which they added inspirational phrases such as the one on this window sill.

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

 

Two-Fold Studio

A thing of beauty from ONO, a garden studio in California called Two-Fold because it's a marvellous mixture of ceramics workshop for an artist and Pilates studio.

It's actually an L-shape (more excellent photos by Ethan Gordon on ONO's site here) which wraps around mature trees in the home's courtyard, features include a wood shingled facade, large sliding glass doors, yellow powder-coated aluminum window frames, and a low wooden deck shaded by the roof.

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Wednesday posts are sponsored by Booths Garden Studios, the UK's No.1 supplier of zero maintenance and portable garden studios