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5 Steps to Adding a Building to Your Garden

5 Steps to Adding a Building to Your Garden

Running out of space in your home appears to be a common problem. The usual solution is the cumbersome process of building an extension to your property. A much simpler and quicker solution is the installation of a summer house in your garden.

'Snowballs' by Bruce Munro -- The Orangery at Longwood Gardens (PA) 2012


Whether you want a separate area to carry out your craft work or hobbies; a private area to install all of your home gym equipment or simply a satisfactory and quiet area to run your business, adding a garden building property can be undertaken quite easily without tarnishing many years of investment and hard work in building up your garden. Here’s the process explained in simple terms.

1.   Where to locate your building?

The reasoning behind your need for a garden building might suggest where you locate your new summer house. If you wish to use your summer house as an area to relax with your e-reader and a glass of wine or your favourite coffee, you will probably want a good view of your garden to immerse yourself in total relaxation and take advantage of the best access to the sun’s rays as they pass across your garden.

Conversely, if your building is going to be used as your new office, you might choose to hide it away behind some trees or bushes. Nevertheless, you will need to consider the growth of those trees and bushes in the future and wonder whether they might damage your garden building as they grow.

Where your garden is particularly narrow, you may not have much option but to place your building close to your property or at the far end of your garden. Whether you choose to add mains electricity or look at solar power, your decision might dictate how close to or far the summer house is from your home.

2.   What type of approach will you require?

Depending upon the choice of the final location for your garden building, you might need to install a pathway or a new route to the building, rather than just wearing down your lawn, which will turn into a mud patch after heavy rain.

You might be able to take advantage of an existing pathway, but where that isn’t possible you’ll have the option of looking at stepping stones, paving slabs or laying a full concrete pathway.

The walkway will give you the opportunity to add solar powered garden lights so that when you want to work at your hobby or train in your gym in the evening, you’ll have a nice safe approach.

3.   Considering your options

Whatever your reasons for needing to add a garden building, there are other additions to your property that can help keep you at work without feeling the need to check on your family or the latest television programmes.

By installing sufficient power, a coffee or a cooling water machine may become your favourite purchase. For simplicity, you could also add a toilet facility to your building. For those with green fingers, you could add a greenhouse section to the outside of your garden building or perhaps a storage area could become your new bike shelter.

4.   Planting around your new summer house

Once your new garden building is up and running, you can make it become a part of your garden and its natural atmosphere by planting a range of your favourite flowers either in a bed or in tubs to bring a new attractiveness for you and your guests when you approach your summer house.

With the addition of a pergola over the door or a trellis to the side, you could easily add climbing roses or a flowering vine to give your new property the real feel of a British garden.

5.   Increasing your vegetable output

Many people enjoy the opportunity to add a vertical growing space for tomatoes, herbs and perhaps courgettes. A vertical garden can provide sufficient organic vegetables for your family’s use across the summer months.

It’s easy to install a summerhouse in your garden, but it takes time and effort to help the building become part of your garden so that two can be enjoyed together.

Jen Byiers writes for Glasgow garden design firm Gardens Galore.

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