Tiger reaches 30th show site milestone after Yorkshire expansion

Woodlands Home & Garden Group’s consumer-facing brand Tiger has reached a significant milestone with the opening of its 30th UK show site.

The latest site - opened at Sam Turner & Sons in Northallerton - joins a nationwide offline network spanning Scotland, the North of England, Wales, the Midlands and the Home Counties. Tiger now operates sites in partnership with British Garden Centres, Blue Diamond, Caulders, Dobbies, Yorkshire Garden Centres, Klondyke, Cherry Lane, alongside independent operators and standalone destination sites.

New sites launched this year sinclude Ashton, Basingstoke, Dundee, Grantham, Great Yarmouth, Hinckley, Linlithgow and Morpeth.

"The physical retail environment remains incredibly powerful for considered purchases like sheds and garden rooms," said Stuart Davison, Commercial Director at Woodlands. "Our research shows that while many consumers enjoy our online shopping experience, a lot customers want to see, touch and compare our quality buildings in the flesh."

The show sites run alongside Tiger’s digital platform which includes online configurators allowing customers to design bespoke buildings and a virtual showroom to browse the collection. 

Originally founded in Yorkshire over 110 years ago, the business is now owned via an Employee Owned Trust, employing more than 230 people across manufacturing, head office, logistics as well as retail.

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

 

Dickens's writing chalet saved for the nation

The future of Charles Dickens's shedlike writing chalet looks a lot brighter thanks to a major financial lifeline from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Set in the gardens of Eastgate House, just off Rochester's High Street, it will receive a £240,000 grant to help develop plans to restore the architectural treasure and open it up to the public. Medway Council is contributing £40,000, while project partners from the Rochester and Chatham branch of the Dickens Fellowship are contributing £5,000. 

Now more than 160 years old, this Grade I-listed structure, situated in Eastgate Gardens, is extremely fragile and at serious risk of being lost.

Dickens worked there on several of his novels including Our Mutual Friend, The Uncommercial Traveller, and his final, unfinished, work The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He also rehearsed there before his numerous public appearances and lined the second floor with mirrors to help him prepare.

The chalet was given to him as a present from actor friend Charles Fechter in 1864 when Dickens lived at Gads Hill in Higham. It arrived at Higham Railway Station on Christmas Eve 1864, in 94 pieces packed into 58 boxes, an early example of prefabricated design and was moved to its current location in Rochester in the 1960s.

The project will conserve and restore the Chalet where organisers plan to develop a programme of events for residents, schools, and visitors to explore Dickens’ creativity and his contemporary relevance as a social campaigner. If development plans are successful, they will unlock a further funding of £1.2m from the Heritage Fund.

Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: "I’m pleased we are adding the Charles Dickens Writing Chalet, the writing nook where he wrote his last novels in peace and tranquillity, to the writing heritage we’ve funded over the years."

Image: Nick Johnson/The Imageworks

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Garden office with storage

A nice case study from Modern Garden Rooms who built this garden office with storage for a client in London. It replaced an existing garden shed with a much larger and more useful building for the compact garden, with an integrated shed for storing garden tools.
 
It's a 6m x 3m build combining its two most popular models, the concave garden room and the cube room. Inside there is a main room with an internal doorway leading to a smaller room at the back. The windowless shed/storage room was built to the front with its own access via a 'hidden' door. Features include 300mm decking and French doors.  
 

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

Friday Finery: Mirrored beach huts

You've got until June 30 to catch the three marvellous mirrored beach huts on show at the Worthing Fringe Festival. The  'A piECE of our Mind' installations is built by ECE Architecture, this is what they say about them:

The three miniature mirrored beach huts are playful, creative and deliberately rooted in place; designed to celebrate Worthing, spark curiosity, and invite people to see the town through a different lens. As they move across locations throughout June, they encourage residents and visitors alike to explore, pause, connect and take pride in their surroundings. 

The moveable huts were made with locally sourced materials including from Covers Timber & Builders Merchants in Bognor Regis, and will be auctioned for charity at the end of the month.

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Work From Oval

While we are obviously very much here to bang the gong for shedworking and garden offices (and other microarchitectural marvels), Shedworking has always been a supporter of third place working, the idea that you don't have to be sitting in a 'traditional' office to get your work done (we were perhaps the earliest exponent of pubworking).

So we've been following with some interest how Surrey County Cricket club have trialled its 'Work From Oval' experiment this summer, encouraging people to come and watch some County Championship matches at the Kia Oval and bring their work along too. 

For example, tickets for the late April game against Essex cost a very reasonable £15 and more than 100 people took advantage of the offer, making use of the various wifi upgrades during pre-season and the set aside work areas with desks, which not only have access to power but just as importantly clear views of the game. 

“We’re determined to continue to grow the audience for the Rothesay County Championship and the team have been working on ways to try and encourage more people to come through the gates this year," said Surrey CEO, Steve Elworthy. “We know that many fans treat the Kia Oval as their second home and have been using the ground to ‘Work From Oval’ for many years and we wanted to encourage others to come along as well.”

The initiative is continuing to run through all Surrey men’s and women’s games during working week hours this summer.

Photo courtesy Surrey CC

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

Voting opens for Shed of the Year 2026

It's time. The entrants to this year's Tiger Shed of the Year competition have been whittled town the public vote stage with 38 finalists battling to be overall champion in this 20th anniversary event. 

You can vote via the link above for:

• Unexpected/Unique Category
• Budget Category
• Cabin/Summerhouse Category
• Colourful Category
• Vote For the Eco-Haven Category
• Garden-Sanctuary Category
• Pub/Entertainment Category
• Simple But Effective Category
• Workshop/Studio Category

Public voting is now open and closes July 14. One of our favourites is The Wheelhouse, below, owned by Richard Banks & Abi from Chesterton, Shropshire.

 

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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

 

Anne's Art Studio

A tremendous 36sqm asymmetrical artist's studio under a tree canopy in Wiltshire from Richmond Bell Architects, pictured above next to the 1950s bungalow on the same property. The SIPs-built studio has a large metal-framed window and roof light to get in as much light as possible and offer nice views of the garden, as well as charred timber cladding, concealed gutters, and a natty interior window seat.

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

 

Friday Finery: Lewis & Wood at Plankbridge

Shepherd's hut specialists Plankbridge launched a new partnership at Chelsea Flower Show this year with wallpaper and fabric company Lewis & Wood. Here's what the interior of your new hut could look like!

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

Composer's Cabin comes to St Pancras station

My favourite build from Chelsea Flower Show this year has come to meet a wider public in St Pancras station in London

Post-show, the Martha Krempel and Malvern Garden Buildings delight is now on display in the main concourse where passersby can nip in and learn more about garden offices, shedworking, and peatland conservation. Or as the St Pancras folk put it:

Visitors are invited to pause during their journey, explore the space and reflect on the relationship between creativity, nature and the environments that inspire both. The installation also celebrates London St. Pancras Highspeed’s long-standing connection with music through the inclusion of a Steinway Spirio self-playing piano, creating moments of reflection and spontaneous performance throughout the day. 

You can nip in and have a gander until June 21. 

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

 

Booths launches redesigned web site

Booths Garden Studios has gone live with its new redesigned web site. It's well worth clicking through from the link and having a good nose round - Shedworking gives it the thumbs up for smartness, detail, and interest, with a good case studies section and plenty of information about its various zero maintenance offerings, as well as renting details and an attractive gallery.

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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

 

Last chance to enter Shed of the Year 2026

There's only a week to go before entries close for this year's 20th anniversary Shed of the Year competition. 

The last day is June 14 to get your shed into the mix, before public voting begins the following day and closes on July 14. The winners will be announced on July 29, with an overall winner, category winners, and regional winners.

Organiser and founder of the competition Andrew Wilcox, known to us old-timers as Uncle Wilco, is particularly encouraging entries in the Simple But Effective, Community, and Colourful categories. 

Click the link top for more information about how to enter. 

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

 

Friday Finery: The Philosophy of Sheds (video)

A special treat for you all for this week's Finery, an excerpt from my A Drink with the Idler talk last week with the magazine's editor Tom Hodgkinson. 

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

Blue Forest's luxury treehouses coming to St Martin-in-the-Fields this summer

 

Treehouse specialists Blue Forest will transform the grounds of St Martin-in-the-Fields, overlooking Trafalgar Square, into 'Lost Oasis' an immersive urban garden of timber, greenery, food, drink, sport and live entertainment.

Designed and built by Blue Forest in partnership with Cornwall’s Lost Gardens of Heligan, Lost Oasis (artist's render pictured above) will features a series of carefully crafted timber structures and treehouses alongside equally appealing planting. It will offer rotating chef residencies from the likes of Nathan Outlaw, major sporting screenings including the football World Cup, Wimbledon and the Formula 1 British Grand Prix, as well as live music and comedy festival.

“The timber structures will feel as though they have grown out of the landscape, wrapped in living planting and built to tread lightly on their surroundings, bringing a true sense of the wild into the heart of London," said Andy Payne, Blue Forest founder.

It will run June 10 to August 30 and Shedworking is planning to report back from its press opening evening next Tuesday.

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

 

BBQube

Arctic Cabins, known for their non-square hexagonal huts, have brought out a square hut model called The BBQube. Here's what they say about it:

Perfect for compact garden spaces, the BBQube has straight-walls, and rather than the usual hexagonal shape, they are cube-shaped to minimise the cabin’s footprint and fit neatly into the corner of your garden. Step inside and you’ll immediately notice how the clever layout maximises space. The BBQube offers generous seating and easy movement, creating a sociable environment without overwhelming your garden.

Features include a high-quality central BBQ grill with adjustable hood, three large reindeer skins, and Composite pegged base system. 

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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

 

Family garden office (video)

 

The new garden office HQ of the family-run Aqua Sol Ingredients from Bakers Garden Buildings represents an important move from using bedrooms and dining rooms to a fully bespoke garden office. It has a steel and timber frame and features climate control temperature equipment inside.  Enjoy the short video of it below.
 

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