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.

***********************************************

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

 

 

The Tiny Workshop wins Shed of the Year 2025

Mike Robinson, an engineer from Plumstead, South-East London, has won the 2025 Cuprinol Shed of the Year with his The Tiny Workshop which claimed top spot in the Workshop/Studio category.

The Tiny Workshop is designed to slot neatly into a garden with limited room. Mike built the shed using two sets of heavy duty steel shelving, bolted together and clad with wood painted in Cuprinol Garden Shades (Black Ash). Splashes of colour have also been added throughout, with the inside doors and pallet seating decorated with Wild Thyme, and saw horses and a ladder finished with Emerald Stone. Two doors flap open at the bottom and top to provide flooring and handy rain protection, with an overhanging green roof to store garden tools.
 
Built over the course of a few weekends, it is a toolshed, workshop, and storage space.

“We needed a good bit of storage for the garden necessities," said Mike. "Off-the-shelf options would have taken up too much room so we went with a DIY design and build. I think it has worked a treat. It’s a creative space where I can tinker and mend, as well as have the storage space for garden stuff, kids’ games and tools.


“I designed brackets for the old spanner handles with a 3D printer. The green roof will come into its own in the next year or so too, and I’m looking forward to seeing it come to life. I’m so happy the judges loved it too, and can’t believe I actually won.”
 
As part of his prize, Mike wins an overnight’s nature getaway, £1,000 in cash and £250 worth of Cuprinol product. 

“In a difficult time of paying more and getting less, The Tiny Workshop is a shining example of what can be achieved even in the most compact of spaces," said competition founder and head judge Andrew Wilcox.
 
“This year’s winner takes the competition back to its roots of championing the simple yet effective. Traditionally, sheds have just been seen as somewhere to store your tools, or perhaps somewhere to potter and play. The Tiny Workshop takes this seemingly basic concept and turns into something so inspired but also still very practical, and truly nothing like we’ve seen before in this competition’s history.  I hope Mike can inspire sheddies for years to come, and to enter the 20th Cuprinol Shed of the Year competition in 2026.”
 
Marianne Shillingford, Creative and Colour Expert at Cuprinol, added: "The Tiny Workshop is a testament to Mike’s ingenious solutions-focused creativity. From impactful use of storage, to striking balance of colour, Mike’s shed is a first-in-class example of industrial chic."

*************************************

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

 
 

Friday Finery: Edgerton Road bus shelter

The fabulous timber-framed Edgerton Road bus shelter in Huddersfield, formerly a tram shelter. Grade II listed, it was built in 1896 then completely refurbished and turned into a bus shelter in 2015 in time for the Tour de France that year. Features include a pyramidal slate roof, and a nice bench to sit on.

Photo by Tim Green

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

 

The Glasshouse Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025

Continuing our look at the finest shedlike structures coming up over the next few months at various garden shows, here's an early glimpse of Hollaway Studio's collaboration with longstanding friend of Shedworking the award-winning garden designer Jo Thompson for her garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show (May 20- 24).

The garden is for the horticultural social enterprise The Glasshouse which supports training and employment opportunities for women in UK prisons and those who are recently released.
 
Hollaway Studio’s pavilion right at the centre of the garden is a contemporary interpretation of a Victorian glasshouse that offers a practical space for shelter and refuge, but also a peaceful retreat where women can connect with nature and one another - a space for women to come together as a community through gardening, and discover how horticulture builds confidence and skills.

Alex Richards, Managing Partner of Hollaway Studio said: “This has been a rare and rewarding opportunity to dissolve the boundaries between built form and nature. Designing a building to be part of a garden, rather than beside one, has allowed us to rethink the relationship between structure and setting in a truly collaborative way."
 
Designed in the round, the curved lightweight pavilion has no front or back, and features various pivoting screens to blur the lines between inside and out. Features include a completely retractable recycled acrylic façade, green sedum roof, integrated rainwater outlets. Interestingly, the garden was built using a green hydrogen-powered zero-emission JCB digger to build the garden, and the whole thing was built without concrete, the reclaimed stone floor resting on paving slabs, making it ‘no-dig’ and making minimal environmental impact.

Following the show, the garden and pavilion will be re-built in a women’s prison in the South of England.

*************************************

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

 

Bespoke artist’s studio in Cambridge

Another good example of how small spaces are as good for garden offices as enormous ones. This insulated bespoke artist's studio comes from Cosy Garden Rooms, and measures 3.5m x 2.1m. As you can see, inside there is plenty of space for a desk, easel, comfortable chair, an storage for artist supplies. A roof lantern gives the room loads of natural light, and outside a green roof offers an eco-friendly feature.

The exterior has a two-tone colour scheme, Monetary Taupe to the front and left, Anthracite on the back, right, and footer. There's also a 300mm overhang. Inside, there are white grooved walls, and light grey laminate flooring plus a discreet wall-mounted infrared heater.

*************************************

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

Garden office with green roof

One of the key claims about green roofs - other than their eco-credentials - is that by adding them to your garden office it then blends into the natural surroundings far better. This Workroom model from Little Garden Offices in Cornwall is additional proof of that fact.

*************************************

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

Shed saunas

 

 

We've covered shed saunas before on Shedworking but I thought readers might be interested in one of my shed columns that appear in every issue of the Idler magazine (the latest edition features a nice piece on ice shanties). Here it is, from the back end of last year:  

 

Shedlife is as subject to trends and fashion as any other part of society. 2008 was the year of the green roof. In 2009 it was micro pods (and then again a couple of years ago) and in 2018 ‘round’ was the shape to be seen in. Over the last 20 years we’ve seen the welcome rebirth of the shepherd’s hut, the greenhouse as a mixed-use space, and even an unexpected uptick in roofless garden offices in 2021. Now, the sauna shed is having its moment in the sun. 

 

There’s certainly growing interest in saunas in general and back garden “wellness sanctuaries” in the UK. In May this year, the British Sauna Society organised its first Sauna Summit, bringing 250 delegates from all over the country and as far afield as the US, Norway and Finland. And at the start of the year English Heritage gave Grade II listed status to a purpose-built wooden sauna in Aylesford, Kent dating back to the 1948 London Olympics and donated by the Finnish Olympic team. Catherine Croft, Director of the Twentieth Century Society, commented: “More spartan than today’s pampering-led spa-based saunas, this modest prefabricated structure is evocative of Finnish national identity and hard sporting graft, a kind of performance enhancing shed!” 

 

It’s easy to see why. On the most basic level, they’re simply a lot of fun, but there are numerous health benefits too, from claims to helping with relaxation and improved sleep, lowering stress and helping with depression, to a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's, skin condition management and lower blood pressure and pain relief pluses (though do remember that there are some risks involved, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions). 

 

Shepherd's hut specialists Plankbridge which is based near Dorchester has seen a major surge in customers interested in outdoor saunas, so earlier this year came with a 14ft design aimed at people with private gardens, as well as glamping and hospitality businesses. Features for the four person-sauna include a sustainable Scandinavian aspen lining sourced from Sweden, separate changing area, under-bench storage, and either wood-fired or electric, all with a hard-wearing corrugated-steel exterior cladding.

 

"The growth in the wellness-at-home market has definitely been reflected in the number of enquiries we’ve received at Plankbridge over the past year or so for saunas, hot tubs and treatment rooms," said Plankbridge founder Richard Lee. "And while we’ve designed various bespoke sauna huts for customers before, including one for a ski lodge in the French Alps and another which is now sitting beside a swimming pond in Herefordshire, this is the first time we have taken an existing Plankbridge hut model, the Snug, which is based on the proportions of the Victorian originals and the most traditional of all our shepherd’s huts, and used it for this very specific purpose."

 

Wildhut is one of the new sauna suppliers on the block. It was set up by British female entrepreneurs Thaisa Box and Lisa Deller in 2021, offering outdoor saunas handmade in West Sussex to order. Exterior cladding is natural FSC certified wood, with 100% sheep’s wool insulation, long letter box or large picture window, and options such as a mobile app for remote controlling the sauna. There are various models, the smallest coming in at just 2.2m wide x 2.5m high x 1.94m, rising to one sufficiently capacious for eight people. 

 

The family-run Arctic Cabins (one of its sauna models is pictured top) has a much longer history, operating since 2001 when owner Gareth and his Finnish wife Virpi took the plunge and brought the traditional BBQ huts of her homeland to Blighty. In the same way that these huts provide a sanctuary from the winter elements, so do their Arctic Sauna Cabins models. Initially imported from Scandinavia, they’re now all built in Derbyshire. Their leading cabin seats five with a 3.7m x 3.9m spec, a genuine Finnish-made 6KW electric sauna heater, external porch area with cool-down seating, and the all-important integrated two-tier bench seating.

 

Arctic keep up a hectic schedule of appearing at dozens of regional and national home and garden shows throughout the year so you can easily have a chat with them, and they also have a show site in Nottingham. 

***********************************************

Monday posts are sponsored by Cosy Garden Rooms, the UK's No. 1 bespoke garden room designer and builder.

 

Green roofs for garden rooms

A guest post from Cosy Garden Rooms on one of the most popular features of garden offices and garden rooms. 

A green roof is a living roof, that is partially or completely covered with plants and vegetation. There are many different types of plant that can be used including meadow flowers, sedum, moss and herbs. Turf roofs are also an option but are not often used because they are heavy and need a lot of maintenance otherwise they become messy. 

All green roofs are made up of multiple layers, including a waterproofing membrane, growing medium, and plants. At Cosy Garden Rooms, we use sedum roofs in our garden room designs. A green roof is a generic term for any living roof, while a sedum roof specifically features low-growing succulents, a type of plant species. We use sedum-based living roofs because they are low-maintenance, durable, and can provide year-round visual interest.

Benefits of green and sedum roofs include

• Thermal and acoustic insulation
• Supports a wonderful ecosystem for birds and insects
• Offers a softer, more natural look compared to traditional roofing materials, especially when viewed from higher levels 
• Green roofs, including sedum roofs, act as natural sponges by absorbing and retaining rainwater, reducing runoff, preventing flooding, filtering pollutants, and easing the strain on drainage systems around garden rooms

When installing a green or sedum roof, one of the most important considerations is the structural strength of the garden room. Green roofs are heavier than standard roofing materials, especially when wet, as they hold both plants and substrate. 

While green roofs in general may require some maintenance, sedum roofs are particularly low-maintenance, making them a popular choice. Sedum plants are drought-tolerant, needing little to no watering once established, and they don’t require frequent feeding. A light application of fertilizer once a year is typically sufficient to keep the plants healthy. Additionally, sedum roofs don’t need mowing, making them an easy-care option for homeowners. Occasional weeding or trimming might be necessary, but overall, they are a practical, fuss-free choice for anyone looking to incorporate a living roof into their garden room.

A green roof is an additional cost. Your garden room will function perfectly well without one. However, people like them, and they are becoming popular. As a basic guide price, they cost £50 per square meter plus trims and fitting if the roof is strong enough for the additional weight.

Pictured below is a green roof delivery.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Friday Finery: Garden office green roof

Green roofs on garden offices went through a huge period of growth a decade ago and while it's still a commonly offered extra feature, they seem to have gone a bit quiet in recent years. Here's a fine example of the genre for this week's Friday Finery slot from Garden2Office.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Tom Stuart-Smith's shed wins Gold at Chelsea Flower Show (video)

The National Garden Scheme Garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith for the National Garden Scheme which features a fabulous shed and is funded by Project Giving Back has won an RHS Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.  

Although the garden with its woodland edge planting is lovely, it's the artisan hut - a cleft Green oak structure around a softwood timber frame, lined with beech and oak panelling and with a timber shingle roof - that is the true star of the design. Inside is a York stone floor.

It's designed by architect Ben Stuart-Smith, Tom's son, and was built by furniture maker and woodworker Fenton Scott-Fielder with his colleagues in Bristol. When the show finishes, it will be moved to the new Maggie’s garden at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for the use of those receiving cancer treatment and their families.

Below, Tom talks about the shed, and the garden, and there's an excellent walk-through:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

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

London garden office

An intriguing garden office from architects Martins Camisuli in London's Camden area (lots more excellent photos via the link) in a slightly odd-shaped garden. Features include exposed raw timbers, oversized stud work wall clad in larch, and a bespoke shelving system, vaulted roof with skylight, and green roof.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

  

Garden office with remarkable green roof and walls

One of the loveliest photos of a garden office we've seen for many a month. This beauty is the work of living roof, wall and general green infrastructure experts Pritchard & Pritchard who say about it: "A garden office shrouded in the most fantastic coat of plants from roof to wall! We have had huge pleasure creating this oasis - it would fit well into 'The Shire' in Lord of the Rings!" 

-------------------------------------------------------

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

 

Garden office with shower

A genuine multi-use garden office/studio/building in Edinburgh, built by the enivronmentally-friendly Bothanna Cabins under the aegis of Kris Grant Architect. Not only does it function as a garden office, it is also used for yoga, table tennis, and general entertaining. Features include an oak frame, natural wood fibre insulation, a green roof, and ground screws rather than concrete foundations, not to mention a shower room.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

SMART launches new maintenance-free garden office

An interesting new model from SMART, a no-maintenance build called FORGE. There is no timber anywhere, and instead there is a recylcable steel frame and composite style eco-friendly Kerracore cladding which have a wood-like texture.  It comes in three sizes with nine colour options for the outside Artefoam panels, aluminium doors and windows, and an exterior light, plus slimline radiator and all the usual insulation.

The big selling point is that it is resistant to rot, scratches, and fading, plus does not need repainting, but another big plus is that it comes with a green roof option (on top of which SMART is  offsetting the carbon footprint of delivery and installation so the whole process is Net Zero).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

The RHS Garden Retreat

Brand new from The Posh Shed Company is The RHS Garden Retreat model, developed with the Royal Horticultural Society and indeed can be seen at RHS Garden Wisley at Battleston Hill in Surrey. It's fully insulated and double-glazed with a covered porch (with integral seat), attractive cedar shingled roof and three full height windows, but the Shedworking staff's eye was particularly drawn to its vaulted green roof section.

Here's what they say about it:

"The construction of the roof means that this design has the unique capability to have a living roof planted on top whilst at the same time having cedar shingles around the edge to give that rustic feel. The cedar shingles are blue grade (top quality) the roof pitch of the cedar section of the roof is 45 degrees. Internally the roof is vaulted giving as much of the external height into the internal area and creating a feeling of space."

There's a particularly good introductory offer on at the moment to the first 10 customers to order.

-------------------------------------------------------

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

 

EcoShed 01

There are some remarkable garden office builds nowadays, but there is also something immensely satisfying in something with a strongly traditional ethos. This is EcoShed 01 from Shape Architecture, in a quite spot in Loris Gardens, Hammersmith, London. It's a beam and post build, clad it timber, and with a green sedum roof, what the architects describe as "merging into its garden setting and providing an oasis of calm". Inside the green roof ethos is continued, with plenty of secondhand/upcycled features including doors used as flooring, and a recycled sink. There's an equally impressive EcoShed 02 with a rubble roof also in Hammersmith which is well worth a look.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday posts are sponsored by Henshalls Insurance, specialists in insuring garden offices and other garden buildings. Click here for more information.

 

 

Garden studio design inspired by Gaudí

Here's one from the drawing board that we're looking forward to seeing in real life. It's a garden office designed by Shape Architecture that has been just been given the green light from the planning folk. It will eventually be located at the top of a steep garden owned by a carpenter who has an interest in the work of Catalan architect Antoní Gaudí, celebrated by Shape in the Gaudíesque roof shaping.

-------------------------------------------------------

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

Karin Celestine: shedworker

Karin Celestine is the creative force behind Celestine and the Hare. From her garden office shed in her back garden in Monmouth, Wales - crowdfunded by supporters and built by Garden Affairs - she makes needlefelted woollen creatures which she sells online and in galleries, and runs popular needle felting workshops. She also produces stop motion animations of them and writes about them in a growing range of children’s books published by Graffeg. Here's what she says about her work:

I love the inbetween, that is where I am most happy, in myself as a mixed heritage non binary person and in my work combining art and science, and in my worlds I create where real meets fairy tale and folklore. I have a love of the magical worlds that exist just out of the corner of our eye, the idea that creatures are going about their every day business, watering their flowers, reading books in the woods,

Karin calls her space 'Shed of Glory', a wonderful name. Here's what she says about it:

"It looks like a little Swedish red house on the outside. Inside the wood feels so lovely to be around. It is so easy to put up shelves or hooks. It is warm and cosy, The doors and windows all work and are double glazed but there is something cosy about being in a small wooden space. I have all my stuff around me, pictures on the walls.. I just love it so much. And I’m planning on a green roof for it too so it will be helping the wildlife as well as making me happy inside.

Here's an example of her work, The Lightbringers, the first in a four-part series called Tales of the Turning Year, based on the seasons, nature and folklore.

---------------------------------

Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

 

Name Name Pod

Cork is a more popular building material than you might think when it comes to garden offices. We've covered several examples before on Shedworking, but here's a rather nice example from U-Build called the Name Name Pod in south east London.

Designed and built by designer Michelle Tacdol who runs her Name Name business from this attractive garden studio, it has cork cladding on the exterior for textural reasons with obvious sound/insulation benefits. Other features include a rather nice rooflight and a green roof. As U-Build say: "Who says you can’t fit a square pod with a round hole?"

Photo by Jim Stephenson and lots more at the link above and at Name Name on Instagram.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

Garden office green roof

Green roofs suddenly became very popular on garden offices about 10 years ago and then interest appeared to die down a little, although recently we've had a lot of queries about how to install them and our social media team have noticed increasing levels of interest online too. A green roof is a win-win feature, and this image from Green Roofs Direct shows how marvellous they can look a couple of years after installation. The company's YouTube page also features some useful, and not too long, videos on the subject.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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