The Organic Garden. Allan Shepherd
why have I called this section Shed’s Dead? After all, a shed is a wonderful thing – probably the closest thing gardeners have to a cultural icon. It’s a triumph of simplicity and efficiency, combining as it does several important gardening functions within its four thin walls. Being a simple, effective place to store tools is probably the least important job it does. Most non-gardeners wonder what the allure of the shed can be: it’s such a drab, soulless-looking place from the outside. Step inside, however. and you’re immediately in another world. A place where a deckchair, a bottle of wine or a flask of tea is always close by. Where a wind-up radio can be kept wound and primed for a Sunday afternoon of Gardeners’ Question Time on Radio Four. Where the world and its wife can just go and play somewhere else, quite frankly.
I don’t just want a shed, I want a home office with a wood stove and a place to sling a hammock if I feel like sleeping over.
So why would I wish the shed dead? Well, I think we can do better. The first clue came midway through the last paragraph. Why are sheds so drab and soulless? Look at any of the seemingly endless number of shed websites and you will see the same bland carboncopy boxes coming up again and again. They don’t give any clue to the personality of the owner. They don’t blend in with a garden. They don’t add anything apart from convenience to a space. No character. No inspiration. No sense of imagination. A shed is a thing to be hidden by plants, to be shoved into the corners of a garden, to be rendered invisible if possible. Or in the worst gardens, just placed without any thought whatsoever so it sticks out like a tower block amongst tiny rows of terraced-house vegetables. A towering example of mass-produced modernity.
All this could be forgiven if sheds met high environmental criteria, but unless you buy an FSC-approved shed you don’t really know what you’re getting. Buying the average shed is a journey into the unknown. Imagine you’ve just created your beautiful eco-friendly garden. Everything’s carefully laid out to be pleasing to the eye and the soul. And now you need some storage. Well, the average shed is just not doing it for me.
The company Forest Garden supplies DIY shops and garden centres with wood products for the garden, including sheds, using timber cut from FSC-approved UK forests owned by the Forestry Commission. Look out for their label and visit www.forestgarden.co.uk/stockists.asp for the nearest place to buy. Also try www.grange-fencing.com for timber sheds and summerhouses. B&Q and Focus both sell FSC-approved sheds. Try www.greatlittlegarden.co.uk for a range of European-grown FSCapproved timber products, as well as www.simply-summerhouses.co.uk. There are now a number of recycled plastic sheds on the market. Look at: www.langhalegardens.co.uk, www.hudsonwright.net/plastic-storage-sheds.htm, www.heskethsplastics.com/recycled.htm.
What I haven’t said yet is that I don’t just want a shed, I want a home office with a wood stove and a place to sling a hammock if I feel like sleeping over. My shed will have star-gazing windows and a balcony. A hot plate for making tea and a little mouse-proof store for provisions. I imagine my shed will be a little like old Ratty’s house in Wind in the Willows, only with a loftier view. Occasionally I’ll get a visit from Mole and we’ll take a picnic down to the lawn. Nasturtium flowers will hang down from small wooden pots and I shall graze on the peppery leaves. From the balcony I will be able to survey the weed situation in the whole of my garden with a small spyglass, like a sailor looking out to sea for a sight of the enemy. It’s a fantasy, but, if you haven’t got a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?
I started having my shed fantasy way back at Robert Plant’s place when my friend Kevin Beale built one of Britain’s first straw bale buildings: a garden shelter constructed with bales, reclaimed timber, secondhand pallets and lime render (an eco finishing material). It’s the first time I’d ever watched a craftsman at work. Building was a logical step-by-step process. But it was also an art form. The shed was finished off with sculptured lizards climbing down the corners towards the soil. It gave me a privileged close-up view of the art of making something out of nothing. Shed Zeppelin was a fairly bulky number – never use straw bales in a tight squeeze – and it lacked the finesse other materials would have allowed, but it was made on next-to-no budget and worked. It’s still there on Robert’s farm, even though the rest of the garden has sadly passed up the stairway to heaven to that great allotment in the sky.
Ethical choice: materials to avoid
Avoid using materials like PVC, vinyl and other non-recycled plastics. They each take a lot of energy to produce and they create harmful chemicals. Cindy Harris and Pat Borer, authors of CAT’s The Whole House Book, state that the avoidance of PVC is now ‘virtually a hallmark of green, environmentally sensitive building’. They also note that MDF (medium-density fibreboard) has been dubbed the ‘asbestos of the 90s’.
So what’s the alternative? The ecological shed
The first alternative to the dead shed is not to have a shed at all. If you just want somewhere to store a few tools, perhaps a lovingly constructed homemade waterproof box will do. The second is to buy a bespoke shed made to your specification, and the third is to make your own.
To give you some ideas I’ve enlisted the help of architects and eco-designers Jenny and Mehdi (www.jennyandmehdi.org). Jenny and Mehdi spend a month most summers creating the garden for Greenpeace at the Glastonbury Festival. This is always a showcase for low-impact, beautiful spaces made using reclaimed and organic materials. I’ve had the pleasure of helping them construct one of their garden structures – a cordwood wall using natural clay and cut logs of English hardwood. On a burning hot Glastonbury day I had the coolest feet in the field, treading straw into wet clay to form the principal bonding material for the wall.
The process of working with natural materials is much more pleasurable, fun and creative than working with bricks and concrete blocks. Jenny and Mehdi are fantastically imaginative people, able to combine a love of organic spaces with the practical know-how to do the building work themselves. In their treehouse described on the following pages, we have tried to put together a package of design ideas for different-sized gardens and different budgets, but what the three of us feel is that you can take any of the elements that we describe and adapt them to your own situation.
At the heart of Jenny and Mehdi’s philosophy is the idea that the word ‘organic’ should refer just as much to the structures of a garden as to the plants. My only regret with this section is that it cannot go deep enough. Structures and plants need to mesh in a garden to create total atmosphere. It would have been lovely to give you a step-by-step guide to how to make this happen, but there just wasn’t the space. I hope though that there is enough here to inspire you to look deeper. And see what’s possible with a little thought and understanding.
Shed cred – welcome to the treehouse
Shed Zeppelin replaced an old caravan. The caravan was ugly and badly insulated. There was no fire and in the winter we shivered around a gas cooker, grilling tomatoes or cheese on toast. Kevin’s straw bale structure was a luxury apartment compared to this. It was big enough to function as store room, mess house, meeting place and, occasionally (more in the summer than winter), crash pad for tired gardeners with early morning duties to perform. It was a good multi-function space for the whole year.
Jenny and Mehdi’s garden structure in Kay Zitron’s garden in Aberdovey is quite a different affair. Not at all chunky, it shows off the elegance of wood in an open summer stage topped with a curved roof garden and complemented by an enchanting (noises off) room for grandchildren. Kay wanted a structure that would connect an existing patio to a courtyard garden below, that would give her panoramic views of the Irish sea, that would allow her husband to do his office work outside during the warmer months, and provide a place for her grandchildren to play. She also wanted something that would give her the feeling of being in a treehouse.
Although I don’t imagine many people will have the space or time to take on a project like this, it shows off all the main features of ecological design extremely well. It provides an example of a small shed project (the children’s room), which