Perhaps ironically, the TV show ‘Grand Designs’ was the (un)inspiration for my garden office project…

Our wooden greenhouse, constructed with the help of members of South East Essex Local Exchange Trading System (LETS)  from recycled materials in 1994 and pictured here in it’s heyday, had become dysfunctional a few years ago - virtually anything we attempted to grow in it was obliterated by the colonies of slugs and snails that inhabited its nooks and crannies, much of its structure was now rotten and it had become a general dumping ground for rubbish and junk. It had been patched up many times over the years, but looking at it closely now it was clear that it was not only beyond repair but something of an eyesore as well…

At the same time I was seriously experiencing the frustrations of not being able to adequately separate my ‘work’ and ‘home’ lives - a year ago I decided to go part-time in my day job working with adults with learning disabilities in order to concentrate more time and energy on ‘Spiralseed’, my small self-publishing and permaculture teaching and design business. However the closest thing I’d thus far been able to describe as an ‘office’ also doubles up as our bedroom, not a healthy situation in the long term, particularly when the first thing I see when I open my eyes each morning is a shelf full of lever-arch folders with ‘Invoices Oustanding’ or similar written on their spines. I’d explored a number of options including trying to persuade at least one of my children to move out so that I could requisition their bedroom or maybe convert some loft space into an office, but for various reasons none of these were runners…

Debby and I visited the Grand Designs Live show at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands area in May 2009, courtesy of free tickets from our friends Scarlett Fireplaces who were exhibiting at the event. We were somewhat underwhelmed by much of what passes as ’sustainable’, ‘green’ and ‘eco’ these days, as well as the abundance of pushy salespersons who assailed us everytime we so much as paused by pretty much any display, but did rather like the Garden Arks manufactured by Zedfactory. At 19 grand a throw though they were well beyond our price range, not to mention that one of these beauties would leave little room for much else in our 17′ x 27′ garden… But as Debby remarked, why couldn’t we just build our own version?? At that moment what to do about our dilapidated greenhouse and what to do about a lack of home/life/work boundaries became not only crystal clear but an obsession that would fill the next few weeks as I began to scour books and internet sites on self building, natural architecture, tiny houses, photovoltaic energy production and poked around the fine details of pretty much every low impact structure or shed I came across as I developed my own personal garden office vision… And its the development of that vision into reality that I hope to share over the next few months.