Little Redonda

Little Redonda is the lovely garden office belonging to Edinburgh-based Secret Gardens, a garden design and bespoke garden buildings business run by Carolyn Grohmann. Carolyn has an excellent page on the site detailing the project from first thoughts to final construction. Here's a snippet:

Our garden studio project started out as an effort to solve an increasingly common domestic problem: the explosive combination of two young children, a dog and a husband and wife who both work from home. Noise levels within our home are unlikely to drop in the next ten to fifteen years and 'moving into the garden shed', as my husband still puts it, began to look increasingly like the most appealing solution. However, the project slowly evolved into something much more interesting and inspiring than the simple upgrading of a shed.

It's certainly got good ecofriendly credentials. The timber is all FSC certified with larch cladding and oak decking, while the windows and doors were made locally. The floor is reclaimed from a Glasgow college. Insulation is sheep's wool and there is a green sedum roof (pictured above in full bloom).


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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

What is a garden office?

Generally we tend to be fairly vague about what features a garden office needs to have to be able to call itself just that, one of which is usually that it needs to be a standalone structure in the garden or yard. But here's something interesting, a new offering from The Home Office Company which is a home office attached to a house, offering a viable alternative to the standard conservatory: the key benefits are no brick upstand required or deep footings (and, some might add, no sunlight beating through the glass roof, as all their roofs are insulated panels). What do readers think?


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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

The Vespiary: now up and running

We featured Audra Loyal's marvellous Vespiary from where she planned to run her bookbinding and bookmaking business and were delighted to hear from her that she is now up and running. Audra was featured in the local paper The Missoulian in a nice piece by Keila Szpaller which is well worth a browse. Here's a snippet:

The shop's footprint is 12 feet by 12 feet, and the interior space is 10 feet by 10 feet. Even though the "Garden Office" behind their Alder Street home is small, Loyal said it's a much better place to restore books than the dining room table had been. "I would lose an hour a day just setting up and cleaning up," said Loyal, technically a "conservation technician." "And I never felt really good about how I was storing things." Despite it's miniature look, The Vespiary is roomy enough. It holds Loyal's books, the personal ones and the ones she's fixing for clients, as well as her tools of the trade.

It's certainly a decent size and features a sofa for clients, a loft/guest room as well as Montana sheep's wool insulation.


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Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Garden Room Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here.

Charlie Dalton/Smart Garden Offices on Radio Suffolk now

Charlie is talking now about the delights of shedworking to Lesley Dolphin on Radio Suffolk (he's just very kindly called me the Godfather of shedworking). You can listen (or listen again) here.

BluePrint Home Offices (screencast)

Have a look around yourself at BluePrint Home Offices.


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Tuesday posts are sponsored by The Home Office Company, manufacturers of unique garden rooms since 1998. Now in 10 exciting new colours. Click here for more details.

An average week as a shedworker

Phil Sorrell is a shedworker whose company Where did the tiger go? develops web sites for a wide range of businesses and community groups. At his View From The Shed blog he analyses his working week and presents the findings in an intriguing and very readable way. Here's a snippet:

This week I have got back into the habit of tracking my time for the vast majority of my working day. I find having a timer ticking on my screen helps improve my focus, increases the amount of time billed to clients, and helps me improve the accuracy of my quotes. I thought it might be interesting to share how a freelancer spends their time during an average week.

See the details here.


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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Garden office garden: before and after

A rather splendid makeover by Sprout Garden Design & Landscaping, an awardwinning garden design and landscaping company based in Richmond upon Thames specialising in designing and building small gardens, courtyard spaces and roof terraces.


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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.