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| Exterior view of shed |
Because my gardening supplies were taking over the garage,
we built a potting shed. My husband,
Scott, designed it, with my input. We
wanted it to look as if it might have been part of an old homestead and as if
it belonged on our property. The siding
is made of Western cedar, because we didn’t want to have to paint the siding, and
we wanted it to resist decay. Cedar
resists rot naturally. We situated it in the edge of the woods.
We tried to use recycled and free materials to construct the
shed. My father cut down trees from his
woodlot to provide some cedar lumber for the door. Our neighbor from a previous house was a
carpenter, and we recycled some old windows he reclaimed from a structure he
was repairing. We used old hinges my father
found in one of his outbuilding for door hinges, and I used a garden trowel for
the door latch.
We enclosed one-half of the shed to contain a potting bench,
pots, soil, fertilizers, and supplies.
The other half is open on one end, and contains wheelbarrows, the
lawnmower, and other tools. The windows
prop open, and it’s pleasant to work in the shed with them open while a spring
rain pelts the tin roof.
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| Potting bench with soil container in the middle |
Although a company built the shed, Scott built the potting
bench and shelving. The bench has shelves
for storage, and in the middle of the bench is a round container that holds
potting soil. To the left of the potting
soil container there is a slatted counter with a removable container underneath
the slats. When I put soil into pots,
some falls out of the pots, and instead of making a mess on the counter, it
falls through the slats and into the removable pan, which I can pull out and
dump back into the larger container.
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| Removable container that holds spilled potting soil when it falls through the slats |