Chelsea Flower Show 2016: The Cloudy Bay Garden

New Zealand winery Cloudy Bay will be back at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show again this year with this Sam Ovens-designed garden. Here's what Sam says about it:

The primary material is western red cedar timber (a natural material that exudes quality), which is used in the construction of a deck, boardwalks and cabin, a waterside retreat. A large reflective pool adds a sensory element to the design with connotations of setting sail and drifting away, or even escaping. The cabin and boardwalk elements have a pontoon-like quality.

And this is what last year's Gold-winning Cloudy Bay garden with garden office looked like, below.

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

Chelsea Flower Show 2016: The Harrods Eccentric British Garden

Continuing our look at this year's shedworkingish elements at the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show, The Harrods Eccentric British Garden is designed by Diarmuid Gavin, no stranger to shedworking designs who readers will remember from his 2007 design. It's more traditional than many of his previous wellknown designs though is still an "alternative take on a quintessentially English garden, in which he embraces flowering herbaceous perennials, formal topiary and regimented structure". In particular, look out for the octagonal folly tower which is inspired by English cartoonist and illustrator William Heath Robinson, and which promises surprises for visitors. There is also a shed that will contain Heath Robinson-inspired gadgets. --------------------------------------------------------

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

Henry David Thoreau's cabin vs gas pipeline

An excellent article on Atlas Obscura looks at how protestors, led by timber-frame builder Will Elwell are protesting against a planned new gas pipeline through their village of Ashfield, Massachusetts (and some of the state's sensitive ecosystem), by building a cabin modelled on Godfather of Shedworking Henry David Thoreau's Walden cabin right in its proposed path. Here's a snippet:

Though Elwell had grown up close to Concord, and often went fishing at Walden Pond, he’d never really thought much about Thoreau. But he knew that Thoreau had written about civil disobedience, intertwined with philosophy, society, government, and nature. “Thoreau felt that if the government is not taking care of those who it governs, then there’s a right for citizens to express their opinion about that,” says Elwell. “And also if they need to create some kind of civil disobedience to change things, instead of just sitting around and accepting the status quo.” 

More details at the campaign's Facebook page Thoreau Cabin Pipeline Barricade

 

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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.

Garden office made from surplus building materials

Enviromate is a platform which allows you to buy and sell surplus building materials and has recently seen an influx of DIY enthusiasts who have discovered supplies they can buy for cut-down ‘trade' prices as well as making cash selling surplus materials from their own projects.

Paul Wells from Kent used Enviromate for the materials for his home office project. Using only surplus materials like double-glazed windows, timber and plasterboard that would have otherwise gone into landfill, he set about building a fantastic home office in his garden, all for just £150.

“My focus for the build was essentially to finish the project for as little cost as possible," Paul told Shedworking. "I wanted to completely self-build the office space in my garden, but I didn't want to pay prices at DIY stores for brand new materials. I ended up trawling through various other marketplaces and 'For Sale and Wanted' sites before I came across Enviromate.

"I was pleasantly surprised at how being a ‘building’ marketplace, it was easy for me to find the majority of what I needed for the project. I sourced all material from the site, and I was lucky that in my area there were some great bargains.” ----------------------------------------------------

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

Shedworkers at risk of back health problems

It's Chiropractic Awareness Week and this year’s campaign focuses on shedworking, flexible working, and the impact that working remotely can have on back health. The campaign is a result of consumer research conducted by the British Chiropractic Association who say that a fifth of people working remotely on a computer do so from the sofa, and more than one in ten admit working from their bed.

Work was cited as a trigger of back or neck pain by nearly a fifth of sufferers, but despite this, more than a quarter of workers admit to taking no proactive measures to protect their back while at work, whether at home or in an office.

The survey revealed that sitting in the same position for long periods of time was the most common cause of back or neck pain in the workplace, with over two fifths of workers who have suffered from back or neck pain citing this as a contributing factor.

The BCA has the following tips for shedworkers and other people working at home:

* If possible, always work at a table, sitting on a chair, rather than on the sofa or in bed.
* The top of your screen should be level with your eyebrows and if you are working from a laptop, make sure you are not hunching over the screen.
* If you don’t want to invest in a computer stand, place sturdy books, for example shopping catalogues, under your laptop so that you can adjust the level of the screen to fit your eye line.
* Use a detachable keyboard and mouse whenever possible, as this will ensure that your movement is not restricted and you are not placing unnecessary strain on your back.
* Taking regular breaks is extremely important and the BCA recommends workers move around every 20-30 minutes. An easy way to ensure that you get away from your desk is to set a loud alarm in another room.
* When making phone calls, take the opportunity to get up from your desk and move around as you talk.
* Embrace the privacy of working from home by doing regular stretches.

The BCA has developed a series of simple exercises to improve posture and help prevent back pain on its site here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Chelsea Flower Show 2016: The Garden of Mindful Living

Today we start our annual look at the forthcoming shedworkingesque delights at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show next month with The Garden of Mindful Living, designed by Paul Martin. Built by Beautiful Horizon Landscape and sponsored by Vestra Wealth, this lovely piece of microarchitectre is described as a "contemporary modern garden owned by a busy city client" and has been "inspired by the love of Far Eastern travel, yoga and a requirement for a calm space in which to relax after a busy day at work". It includess Corten walls, grey-splashed limestone, and large sliding shutters "that open to reveal the sparkling city views at night". There's also an excellent interview with Paul about his garden studio and garden in general in the Irish Times. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

New cloaking technology behind launch of invisible shed

Every year we bring you some incredible designs on Shedworking, but this is probably the most incredible: a Western Red cedar-clad timber building with full electrics and a woodburning stove built to be invisible if you are looking at it from the outside, but with all the usual features inside, including swivel chairs, recycled moss insulation, and a small fridge powered by the wind turbine on top (you can just make out its shadow in the image above). The prototype model - pictured above - is the result of a collaboration between French architects Avril Poisson and Italian timber experts Pesce Daprile. The really clever bit is the invisibility mechanism which is largely done with carefully-concealed mirrors and plenty smoke but there are more details about that in the Guardian newspaper. --------------------------------------------------------

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