The Organic Garden

complete protection from the rain, a single layer of breathable waterproof membrane has been placed beneath the shingles.

Leave the room and go back along the boardwalk and you come to the stage. This is topped by an amazing parabolic curved roof, an inspiring twist of a roof that really makes you feel as if you’re in a unique space. The stage is all green oak, apart from the balustrades, which are made out of locally cut hazel with the bark stripped off to make them last longer. The balustrades are fitted in a pegged frame. The pegs can be removed, the frame dropped and the hazels replaced every ten years before they begin to rot. The green oak will not rot. It does not need weather-proofing with a chemical treatment, lacquer or paint, which is not the case with the kind of softwoods normally used in manufactured sheds (another environmental saving).

The frame for the stage was made flat on the ground and raised with block and tackle, just like the famous barn-raising scene in the Harrison Ford movie Witness, except without the costumes. Jenny and Mehdi’s friends came to help, pulling the frame up by hand and inching it into place. A frame-raising is a real cause for celebration, a staging post in the building process. It’s a joy you just don’t get with concrete blocks.

Planting the roof

Leave the stage through the far entrance, head towards the house, turn round 360 degrees and look back. This should be your first glimpse of the amazing roof garden that tops the whole structure. Rolling along the twisted roof like the sea, plants rise and fall on waves of soil bedded on top of a hidden waterproof membrane. On one side a cascading rosemary sits proud to the bow, drooping purple flowers over the grey oak boarding. This is a rural garden but a roof like this could grace any urban shed or house. Not only does a roof garden provide vital garden interest in otherwise drab city streets, it soaks up some of the rainfall and absorbs airborne particles, helping to prevent flooding and reduce pollution.

And there we have it. A multi-functional covered space that combines all the elements you would expect to find in a handcrafted organic shed. It’s made from a renewable resource cut locally, constructed with a minimum of ‘unnatural’ materials (a few stainless steel screws and ringlets, concrete pads and waterproof membranes). The structure fits the space perfectly, drawing the two levels of the house and the courtyard together while creating new garden space on the roof and around the frame. And finally, the clients’ brief has been met: great views to the sea, a home office with electricity and broadband, an adaptable social space and a secret little room for the grandchildren.

Ethical choice: straw bales and other natural building materials

Straw bales are an agricultural by-product, the left-over stalks from the grain harvest. Bound together into square bales they form a tight building block. These are assembled in a brick pattern and staked together with connecting hazel rods to make a wall. They are then rendered with a lime plaster to keep the straw protected from the weather and attack by rodents. Interest in straw bale building has grown as the search for more sustainable building materials has widened. Other natural materials of interest to the eco-builder are cob, rammed earth and stone. In low-rise buildings all are a viable alternative to concrete, which uses vast amounts of energy to produce and is generally less pleasant to work with. CAT’s website has a wide range of publications on all these styles of building (see www.cat.org.uk) and its courses department runs several natural building courses throughout the year. These include Timber Frame Self Build, Straw Bale Building, Cob Building, Building with Earth, and Natural Rendering – Clay Plaster. If you want to make your shed out of recycled pallets, check out www.summerville-novascotia.com/PalletWoodShed for a pictorial record and explanations of the building process. And it costs less than $100 (around £54). Also check out Kevin Beale’s factsheet from CAT, ‘How to Build With Straw Bales’, and www.strawbalebuildingassociation.org.uk.

Other ecological considerations

Jenny and Mehdi’s structure is very much designed for summer use. If you want an all-year-round space, you need to think of your shed more like a miniature version of your house. Eco-homes use a range of techniques to make the most of natural heating and power sources and you can mimic these for your micro-house. Passive solar heating, the process of bringing more heat from the sun into a building, is a must for reducing winter fuel bills. At a basic level you can achieve it by giving your shed space large, south-facing windows, accompanied by smaller windows to the north. If you want to make the most of passive solar features I’d recommend getting hold of a book like CAT’s The Whole House Book. It’s packed full of useful information about green building materials and design features, most of which can be put to good use in a small structure like a shed or summerhouse. If you’re treating your shed as a stepping stone towards buying, making or renovating your own eco-home, it’s an essential purchase. The Whole House Book recommends the newer type of heat-loss-reducing glazing known as low-e glazing. It will also tell you what levels of insulation you require, and what heating options are available.

Kevin Beale (who built the straw bale shed on Robert Plant’s land) is now working on a home office in Snowdonia that includes a woodchip boiler. A woodchip boiler, although more expensive than a conventional solid fuel woodburner (for solid fuel systems check out www.solidfuel.co.uk and www.stovesonline.co.uk), is more environmentally efficient because the rate at which the fuel is burned can be controlled and so less fuel is used. Woodchip or wood pellet can be made from recycled wood waste and comes in bags. This makes fuel storage less of an issue. However, a woodchip boiler needs electricity to run a fan and a thermostat to control the burn rate, so you’ll need a power source.

You could generate your own power at home using solar PV systems or wind or water turbines, but it’s easier to switch to a green electricity supplier and buy renewable energy through the national grid. On a global scale it’s much more efficient to buy from a green supplier through the national grid than to install micro-power systems in every home. Check out www.foe.co.uk for supplier comparisons.

There are some situations where it will pay to go with your own system. Renewable energy systems are useful when the cost of linking to an existing power supply is prohibitively expensive. If you’re connecting your shed to the house electricity supply the work will need to be completed by a certified electrician. CAT has a whole range of renewable energy books and factsheets, many of which are available both as downloads and in paper form. They will tell you how to assess your power needs, choose the right system and get one installed. Visit www.cat.org.uk/catpubs.

Wind turbines are less efficient in built-up areas: they are best sited away from buildings, woodlands and other obstructions on flat open ground. I’ll touch on water collection overleaf but collecting water run-off from a shed roof will save time and money.

Shed’s atomic dustbin

You never plan to turn your shed into a miniature landfill site, but that’s what happens if you don’t de-clutter. Old bicycles, unwanted tools, half-full cans of oil, batteries, random bits of plastic and metal, plant pots, and so on – most of these things can be taken to your local recycling yard and disposed of safely. Phone your council to check facilities. There are also a wide number of individual recycling initiatives for specific materials and unwanted products: www.reuze.co.uk is the best place to start looking.

Since 2003 a number of pesticides have been withdrawn from sale. Any left-over products should have been disposed of by 31 March 2004. If you inadvertently keep or use any withdrawn chemicals you may be prosecuted. Products might include:

 Moss and weed killers for lawns and paths

 Treatments for removing algae from decking and patios

 Ant, cockroach, fly, wasp and aphid killers

 Slug pellets

 Mice and rat poisons

 Anti-mould and fungus paints

 Timber treatments

If they are more than three years old, all of these products could contain banned chemicals, such as:

 Dichlorprop

 Dikegulac

 Resmethrin

 2, 3, 6-TBA

 Tar acids

 Triforine

If anything in your garden shed is labelled as containing one or more of these substances, dispose of it safely with your local waste disposal authority. It is illegal to dispose of garden chemicals down drains, sinks or lavatories.

Non-permanent structures

A shed need not be a permanent space. There are some very fine temporary structures that can serve the same purpose: yurts, domes, tipis and benders (a very cheap structure made from cut hazel rods and a tarpaulin cover) being just four examples. A bender is the easiest to make, but not necessarily that pretty if you’re using an old tarp. You’ll need some flexible pieces of hazel, 21/2 metres or longer. These are pushed 30cm into the ground, bent in towards each other and tied together to form a frame. More pieces of hazel are then placed across the bent poles around the outside of the structure to support it – cross bracing. Waxed cotton tarps are quite ugly but readily available and cheap from army surplus stores. The look of them can be improved using paints. Alternatively, order a specially cut piece of fabric from a nomadic tent supplier – the sort of material that would cover a tipi or a yurt. DIY domes can be made from recycled broom handles or cut hazel, assembled in a geodesic shape. A factsheet explaining how to make one is available from CAT, either as a download or paper copy. Also available from CAT are factsheets explaining how to make tipis and yurts. One of my favourite shed books is Shelters, Shacks and Shanties by DC Beard. Written in 1914, it is a classic of backwoodsman self-sufficiency, full of ideas for easy temporary structures the like of which you would find in some long-forgotten US frontier town or forest in the Mid-West. It’s perfect for some unusual back garden projects, particularly for children in need of a den.

Butts and bins

Every gardener needs a compost bin. The most obvious solution is to make your own and there are various simple designs out there, all utilising a variety of recycled materials including reclaimed timber, pallets, chicken wire and old tyres. You can see various prototypes at the CAT visitor centre and at Garden Organic (HDRA) in Yalding, Kent. Also check out www.gardenorganic.org.uk/factsheets/gg24.php. This webpage provides a simple DIY bin design and you can also order a paper copy of the factsheet.

CAT found compost bins performed best when they were open to the elements, so that air can circulate and water percolate. See page 96 for more information.

CAT sells numerous compost bins, www.cat.org.uk, as do Wiggly Wigglers, www.wigglywigglers.co.uk, and many others. Look out for those made from reclaimed or FSC-approved timber or recycled plastic: www.greatlittlegarden.co.uk, www.forest garden.co.uk and www.grange-fencing.com. The Tank Exchange, www.organiccatalog.com and Blackwalls Ltd all sell water tanks made out of recycled material, while www.plantstuff.com sell ex-distillery oak barrels. The following companies sell trellis, planters, cloches, wildlife homes, etc., made from recycled material: CAT, Planet Friendly Products ([phone]), www.marmaxproducts.co.uk, www.intruplas.com, www.arborvetum.co.uk, www.linkabord.co.uk, www.gardena.co.uk

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