Garden 'Shed With A Bed'
Shed With A Bed - Cape Campbell
This is a garden dream, rather than a garden design project. I've always wanted a garden 'shed with a bed'. It's a childhood dream - the tiny cottage at the end of the garden which fits just me. But just a few more creature comforts creep into the picture as one gets older...
Hard-working retired older-lady gardeners require a few more accessories in their tiny cottage than a comfy bed. I want lots of groovy books in a bookcase, and a chair on the verandah for the reading thereof. Non-Gardening Partner is unimpressed - I already have bookcases in the house, he points out...
Greenery, Water...
I want to be surrounded by friendly greenery, near gentle rippling water. Leafy trees will sway overhead (not too much of the sway, please), and I will sit on my verandah and beam. Again NGP is seems rather disconnected. Surely I can just drag a garden bench over to my pond, put it and myself under the trees, and start reading...
Another Shed - Cape Campbell
Being Silly? Hmm...
I've explained about the 'shed with a bed' fantasy, but he shows a total lack of understanding. I have seven bedrooms in my house, he points out, so why on earth do I think I want another? It doesn't matter that people live in some of the rooms, and two of them have been converted into offices. He thinks I'm being silly, and, of course, he's being logical
.A Kitset Shed
Ha! Beware the older-lady gardener who gets a silly idea and then finds it doesn't cost too much! For I have found an affordable shed, a replica colonial cottage, the cottage of my young dreams, in kitset form. Full instructions are included. And I have bought one - its walls, floor, verandah, and roof bits (oh dear) all arrive in a couple of weeks. They will be carried in through the ram paddock and then - ahem - be erected in, possibly, a day?
Non-Gardening Partner is now hearing plaintive squeaks from the Moosey Head Gardener - they go something like this: 'Will you help me build my garden shed? Pleeeease?' Oh dear. I know that girls can do anything, but old girls sometimes overestimate their ability to hold heavy beams, and hammer upwards, those sorts of things. Building this tiny colonial cottage is going to take some serious cajoling.
Shed With A Bed - Cloud Farm
Garden Shed Accessories
And as to the garden shed's accessories, I have already found THE perfect retro-look knitted bedspread for the bed, and I have THE perfect verandah seat and cushions... Sort the important things out first, right?
My strongest argument for the shed with a bed is as follows. Many of my friends own small holiday homes (AKA baches, cribs, shacks), and the Partners get organised to spend a few days there.
They have to pack up the car, drive for hours, carry in food and supplies, and usually find serious maintenance which needs doing on arrival. So this is no holiday, and the NGP is too busy fixing things to do anything nice. However, my garden 'shed with a bed' becomes my holiday home, and NGP can sleep easy in his bed. In his own house...
Shed with a Bed :- This isn't my own photograph - hope it's alright to publish it!
I've met all the sheds on this page in my travels. Many thanks to the Cape Campbell Walkway owners and the gardener at Cloud Farm for giving me the chance to photograph them. My garden shed with a bed will look something like the one in this thumbnail. Hee hee...