Stylish Sheds.

Week #16. How a garden shed can add to the design of your garden.

An artful greenhouse and garden design by Kathy LaLiberte in Hinesburg, VT.

Hello Everyone.

For many years I’ve desired a greenhouse. A place to start seeds, protect young plants from frost, and an artful element that would fit into the landscape with grace. There is nothing more beautiful than a stylish greenhouse placed at the edge of a garden to show that you are serious about horticulture. Yet lately, I realize that settling for a functional garden shed is a far more practical choice for year-round gardening.

My garden shed, while neither fancy nor beautiful, is the true workhorse of the kitchen garden. It’s small, which means I keep it relatively organized; tools hang on hooks, baskets are stacked, hand tools and gloves are in a canvas bag, and terra cotta pots hold extra plant markers, and twine.

Best of all, the garden shed is used for garden gear only. I don’t have to share it with an auto, old tires, skis, and broken furniture that often collects in a barn or garage. It’s the first place I start in the spring, fetching seedling trays, and the garden fork to turn over the soil. If a motion sensor were installed, it would register a wild frenzy of activity with me going in and out many times during the day for even the smallest reason.

It is equally useful in the fall when the large garden pots are stored over winter, and the many trellis supports including bamboo poles and tomato cages are gathered and leaned against the wall near the door. Fertilizer and birdseed are tightly sealed in galvanized buckets, hoses wrapped, and empty birdhouses hang from the rafters. Everything is in one familiar, and relatively tidy place, year after year.

On the coldest days of winter, I’ll shovel away the snow and step inside to deeply inhale the smell of soil still clinging to the garden tools. And when spring finally comes around again, everything is moved out; first the big pots, then the bamboo poles, and finally the birdhouses. Like old friends, we reconnect for another delightful growing season when everything comes around again full circle.

Inside this garden shed is a refrigerator, for the host to serve chilled wine when entertaining in her kitchen garden.

Multiple outbuildings were once part of a homestead, each with a specific purpose especially useful to farm living: a barn for animals, a blacksmithing shed for welding, the milk house for cheese, and a root cellar for overwintering vegetables.

Like a good pantry, the garden shed does not need to be large, simply efficient to keep everything in the garden neatly organized and easily accessible. If the shed is too large, it may become a storage unit.

A greenhouse now seems frail in comparison, used seasonally, and used for a single purpose: keeping plants alive. I might not have valued the garden shed as much as I do, if it did not come with my house. It was exactly in the right location in close proximity to the kitchen garden, painted black with red trim, and a single window to let in natural light.

It has become the home base for dozens of chipmunks who tunnel below the loose gravel foundation, and a swarm of carpenter bees who return each spring to bore round holes in the wood exterior and lay eggs. I am happy to say we coexist and keep an eye on each other as we move through the day.

Yet function is not the only reason for a stylish garden shed; it can be a retreat for the gardener. I’ve seen photos of “she sheds” a place for the woman to get away, with a table and chairs, a small refrigerator, or a bookcase to catch up on garden magazines. All garden sheds can have personality, either dressed up with a window box or painted a fanciful color that you might never dare use on your house.

A fanciful garden and garden shed built with local stones designed and constructed by stone artist Dan Snow.

 Last summer, when a friend asked for a garden consult, I drove to her house in New Hampshire. It is a former working farm on the top of a mountain, with a large post and beam house and a stunning view. The design of her garden was both playful and productive, with a swing set and play area nearby for her children yet right away I notice it was missing one thing. “Where do you keep your tools?” I asked.  She pointed to the garage, a long walk away.

I scanned the landscape in search of an extra small outbuilding on the property.  “What’s that?” I inquired pointing to a small building across the road in an open field. After hooking it up with the tractor and positioning it at the far end of the garden, it was the missing piece.

The shed gave her kitchen garden both design and function, while also providing a good story: The outbuilding was an abandoned outhouse and had now been repurposed and given a second life.

Green Gulch Zen Center garden shed and organized workspace decorated daily with a fresh bouquet. A healthy reminder to slow down and be present.

Old English gardens have always designed garden sheds as an integral part of the garden plan, considered an essential place to hang tools, stack flowerpots, and keep an extra pair of Wellies. It’s where the garden crew can take cover in case of rain, pot up plants, and catch up on garden journals or small fix-it jobs.

Years ago, while visiting the gardens at Green Gulch farm in Marin County, California, I was surprised to find a stunning bouquet of fresh flowers left on the garden work bench. It was the perfect zen reminder to honor the garden shed, as a place where everything starts, and to take a moment to breathe in and breathe out.

From my garden to yours.

Ellen Ecker Ogden

Ellen Ecker Ogden is the author of The New Heirloom Garden and The Complete Kitchen Garden, among other books for cooks who love to garden. Follow the year-round garden on Instagram.