Garden offices and studios at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2020

The RHS has just announced what kind of shedbased action will be on view at the Chelsea Flower Show next year which is focusing on the environment, sustainability, and the climate emergency, but not it has to be said on garden offices which at this stage are sadly lacking. That said, here's our rundown of what is on offer in the show gardens (of course there will be plenty of shed action in the other stands and we'll do a rundown on those nearer the time).

Above is the Zen Garden (designed by Kazuyuki Ishihara and sponsored by Glion) with a garden house built in collaboration with Japanese architect Kengo Kuma who designed the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Stadium. Below is Bicester Village Shopping's garden (designed by Nikki Tibbles and built by The Outdoor Room). It has a rather attractive wooden pergola made from reclaimed sea groyne.

The Finnish Soul Garden, pictured below, (designed by Taina Suonio built by Conquest Creative Spaces and sponsored by no less than the  Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland) features a sauna with a cool-off.

Here is Miaofu's Garden which will put a tearoom centre stage (designed by Miaofu Designing and Research Institute, built by G K Wilson Landscape Services and Miaofu Ecological Construction Co Ltd, sponsored by MiaoFu Holdings Co Ltd).

And finally,  Trailfinders’ 50th Anniversary Garden with a timber shelter inspired by Nepalese architecture (designed by Jonathan Snow , built by Stewart Landscape Construction).

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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.

Garden offices in a small space

We've highlighted various small garden office and garden studio builds over the years, including some inside homes and offices as well as on budding Prime Ministers' balconies, but of course much the easiest solution is simply to fit a small build into whatever small space you have in the back garden. Here are some examples from Garden Affairs. Top is an example from their Linea range, a garden office pod with a low profile featuring no roof overhang, and below is their Mini Garden Office Pod which comes in at 1.8m x 2.4m, with a 2.5m high roof.

Below is another example of a mini Linea, 2.5m x 2.5m.

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Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Potter's garden office

A lovely stilted treehouse garden office for potter and writer Raina Lee at her home in Los Angeles. It's largely made of plywood with fir wood cladding and reclaimed wood shelves inside.
Via dezeen where there are lots more images and details with photos by Mark Watanabe.  -------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Interview with founder of UK Men's Sheds

A nice interview with Mike Jenn, the founder of UK Men's Sheds, in the current The Big Issue. Here's a snippet:

“I didn’t know why men don’t get involved in community activities as readily as women do, so I figured I’d have one day that’s men only and one that’s mixed, and see if it made any difference. It never did.” Has he since learned why men are less likely to get stuck into local activities? “We’re conditioned to think we have to look after ourselves,” he explains. “We’re no good at asking for help when we feel bored or lonely.”

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Sunday posts are sponsored by eDEN Garden Rooms. Stunning, bespoke high quality garden rooms, to suit your unique space and style

Shed Christmas cards

If you're looking for a shed-theme to your Christmas cards this year, here are a few suggestions. From the top, Santa's Shed from Thrive (using gardening to change lives), Winter Potting Shed from Wrendale, and Beach Huts from brainstrust (the brain cancer people). We'll provide more suggestions in coming weeks, but please do feel free to add your suggestions in the comments below too. -----------------------------------

Saturday posts are sponsored by iHUS Projects, specialists in the design and build of granny annexes for elderly and disabled care.

What eco-friendly materials will be used to build the garden office of the future?

It's always hard to predict the next developments in the garden office industry but here's an interesting report from Sell House Fast who spoke to nearly 600 architects, engineers and construction professionals to ask them which eco-friendly building materials they expected the property industry in general to use more of in 2020

Around three quarters plumped for bamboo, just over a third went for straw bales and more than a third chose cork, a particularly interesting choice as we're already seeing more cork used in garden office builds such as the compostable garden office we recently featured on Shedworking and the cork garden office pictured above which recently made the finals of the Shed of the Year competition in the eco category.

The attractions of these materials are many: bamboo is light and has tensile strength, a good replacement for imported building materials; straw bales have naturally high insulating qualities; and cork does not absorb water or rot and is naturally fire resistant (it is also ideal for flooring and insulation due to its noise as well as shock-absorbing attributes). -------------------------------------------------------

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

Wi-fi in the garden office

Certainly in the top 5 of regular queries to Shedworking from readers is the issue of getting wi-fi working efficiently in the garden office. Here's another suggestion, this time from Pocket-lint about the way to go, Google's Nest Wifi mesh system. It's well worth reading the whole article via the link above, but here's a snippet:

Without Nest Wifi, the Wi-Fi signal in our garden office (15 metres from the house and around 25-metres from our main router) was non-existent. When we set up Nest Wifi and put the Nest Wifi point in the utility room at the back of the house (two rooms away from the Nest Wifi router) however, we got full signal in the office. The speed test was a few Mbps slower in the office (67Mbps) than when the Nest Wifi point was upstairs on the landing (73Mbps) but this difference wasn't noticeable in use.

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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.