Garden office birds project

We've covered Alastair Humphreys and his garden office a couple of times before on Shedworking. The adventurer, author and motivational speaker has come up with an interesting way of connecting with the nature around his build. Here's what he says:

My latest strategy for procrastinating book writing: photographing the birds that visit my writing shed. I set up my camera and then use an app on my phone to take the photos when a bird arrives to distract me from my writing!  

Pictured above is an example of the project and you can watch his ongoing progress at Flickr here.

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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

 

Snowy garden offices

It's that time of year again when snow meets garden office and results in some lovely images. Here are winter 2021's first batch, beginning with naturalist Professor Miles Richardson's view from his writing shed in Derby above. Below is illustrator Bill McConkey's garden studio in the north of England.

And below is novelist Katy Dyer's writing shed in Barnsley enjoying its first ever snow.

And finally, from Scotland, another view from the garden office, this time it's Jean McGeoch's.

Calm around the garden studio this morning…#FirstSnowFall #Scotland pic.twitter.com/otKpOv74YB

— Jean McGeoch (@tweetyjeanie) November 28, 2021

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

 

Beach hut advent calendar

For many years, the Shedworking staff in the runup to Christmas looked forward to the annual beach hut advent calendar down in Brighton & Hove but which sadly stopped running in 2018. The hardworking Hove Beach Hut Association said it was hoping to pick up the reins in 2019 but that was just before the world was hit by lockdowns and plans have understandably been put on the back burner. However, the assocation is holding a Winter Open Day on December 18 from 4pm until 6pm when many huts will be open to the public and with modest festive theme displays - look out for laminated posters such as the one below to indicate which huts are taking part. Fingers crossed that next year the advent calendar will return!

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

Building your own garden office

We did a 'five years later' post about Shedworking reader Mark Porter-Davison's selfbuild garden office odyssey recently and Mark very kindly supplied more images of his build and a few more details. Here's what Mark says about its history:

The short story is that I spotted a beautiful frame in a farmer's field in the borders. A guy had started it as a sort of showpiece for a canoe-building company he was going to run from one of the farm buildings. His plans had changed and a lady saw me taking a pic of 'my dream shed' and whispered that I could probably buy it, because the farmer wanted it removed. I ended up buying the frame and having it moved to a friend's house on a truck. From there I had to take it all apart, piece by piece, and move it on my car's roof to its new home at the end of our garden. Then I set about dusting down my CDT skills not touched since school and trying to rebuild, refactor and complete it using tools I picked up in Lidl. I'm delighted with the end result and it's become my home office and source of daily sanctity and solitude... all inspired by your book!

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Garden office cubes

A nice roundup piece about the garden office industry by Anna Jones for the BBC ('The 'bespoke luxury' of tiny garden office cubes') listing numerous possibilities and focusing on Ryan Williams's new office by Skypods (pictured above) from where he runs his social media marketing company KOMI. Here's a snippet about the situation in Australia:

Melanie Williamson set up her company, Backyard Pods, in 2015, in response to what she saw as a gap in the market for affordable flatpack garden offices and outbuildings. Her flatpack kits start at around A$5,000, (£2,729, $3,660) and she says that at times over the past few months, orders have been three times higher than normal.

She says she’s noticed a lot of interest among city-dwellers who are moving to smaller towns so they can benefit from cheaper property prices and bigger gardens with room for outdoor workspaces. “Sometimes they start consulting with us before they buy their property, because they are buying the property with the intention to do this,” she says.

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

 

Beach Hut apron

We're continuing our occasional look at possible Christmas presents with this rather attractive beach hut print apron from Anita Rose Designs available at The British Craft House. In addition to the lovely shedlike print, there is a double front pocket, adjustable neck strap, and long side ties. It measures 84cm long, by 65cm wide.

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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.

The Barn by Sally Coulthard

Before 21st century garden offices and their electrics, insulation, and green roofs, there was another much more basic form of shedworking. Friend of Shedworking Sally Coulthard - author of numerous books on sheds, nature, and history - combines all three of those areas of expertise in her latest book, The Barn: The Lives, Landscape and Lost Ways of an Old Yorkshire Farm. The book pivots around an old barn on her property in the Howardian Hills of Yorkshire as she narrates its history from threshing barn to a home for horses and cows, and later as a garage for the family cart. It's not an exceptional barn (though the witch marks are intriguing), but Sally uses it as a jumping off point to tell the sometimes rather grim story of the people who farmed the area and have often been rather whitewashed out of history. 

As well as plenty of fascinating material on rural life (hiring fairs, corn spirits, and a lot more about the guano industry than I had expected), it's also a very human history, focusing on the people whose lives changed over several centuries as times and technology changed around them, peppered with contemporary accounts from newspapers which really bring the book to life. For those of us from Yorkshire there is the added interest from its often hyperlocal examples of events (I worked as a journalist in some of the locations she mentions). Readable, fascinating, and just the right length, it's a reminder at a time when shepherds' huts are happily becoming more numerous again that the 30 second commute hasn't always been to a keyboard and a comfy chair.

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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