After I made my last posts about my garden office project yesterday I recieved the following from Jennifer Lauruol, a co-trustee of the Permaculture Association and who also runs Carpe Diem, a garden design consultancy business based in Lancaster.

Hi Graham,

I well understand your obsession! I’ve had three different garden offices in three different houses, all of which I’ve designed myself.  Let me share some of my hard-earned wisdom…

• Make sure it’s lifted off the ground and has a proper dpc of some sort.
  Insulate it! And the roof!! The best one I had included 100mm insultation + plasterboard.
• Look on boat building/narrowboat websites/forums re packing in the most storage into the tiny space.  I warn you, it can be seriously addictive. You’ll be wanting to paint it to look like a gypsy caravan or similar.Also google treehouse construction for some really fantastic ideas!
• A roof light/window (double glazed, water tight and able to open in summer) makes a huge difference to light and your spirits in winter.
• The issue of security is real–make sure the door furniture integrates into the door jam. The best solution I had was using a second-hand double-glazed kitchen door with its original door jam that the hooks and bolts slid across into when locked.  Don’t let your kids take their friends there–one of my teenaged sons  took one of his mates to use my computer, and hey-presto! said ‘mate’ broke in and stole the computer & printer…..!
• Make sure the insulation keeps the books and papers cool in summer and warm in winter–I’ve had both ‘cooked’ books and damp ones….
• Keep a kettle there, as every trip back into the house becomes a distraction…
• Plant shrubs to look at, and to hide the view of the house.

This is the first sketch of the garden office, it was doodled whilst I was attending a Board of Trustees meeting of the Permaculture Association (Britain) and became more detailed as the weekend went on, the colour being added later.

It captures most of the external features I want to incorporate, including a pent roof with recycled windows on the south side, rain water harvesting and a photovoltaic panel on the roof to power a laptop, printer, lights and maybe a small soundsystem, although I havn’t worked out yet exactly how it will be secured. One feature that I will probably change from this sketch is the location of the waterbutt, moving it to the east of the structure so that any overflow can be diverted to the nearby small garden pond.