Sheds and chicken coups can transform your garden
Practicalities all too often are hidden away in the landscape because they are unattractive. Ordinary potting sheds, storage structures and even chicken coups are usually considered eyesores. But what if these buildings could improve the looks of your garden? If you think of these structures as an opportunity to create a focal point, you can transform the ugly into something wonderful. Here are some examples of creative ideas that you can use to inspire interesting designs in your own garden.
Here’s one example of how a potting shed can become the basis to a whole landscape design. This potting shed is a fully functional little house that will be the central design element in the overall garden picture. This is a cottage landscape design that will have window boxes overflowing with flowers, ornamental shutters, and colorful gardens. In the back is a double door that allows even a heavy wheelbarrow to enter the shed.
Chickens are becoming popular additions to landscapes in these days of self-sufficiency, but they don’t have to look like nailed boards and chicken wire bashed together to keep your chickens safe. Instead you can make the materials into statements in the garden. A small chicken coup can built like little chicken hotel. It can be small, attractive and even display character with a decorative coat of paint and a little added décor. Or you can really be creative as you can see in this Old West shed. You can even add a “Marshall’s Office” or “Country Store” sign.
Making a structure into a stylized design can underscore a theme garden, like a Japanese garden with a pagoda-like shed, or a building with a palm-thatched roof to appear tropical. Color can be added to create color schemesto repeat or contrast with flower colors. You can even sculpt a shed to blend into the landscape as a huge boulder with a hollow interior.
These are examples that can help you use your imagination when it comes to designing practical sheds, storage, work spaces, utility areas or chicken coups into your landscape. These structures don’t need to be eye-sores. Convert practical essentials into assets in your garden. Dress them up to make your landscape decorative and exciting.
Designing sheds into the landscape
Storage space in the garden is something we seem to think of after the garden is installed. Sometimes when people become involved with designing the landscape, so much energy is put into exciting construction like swimming pools, outdoor rooms or decorative patios that some of the less glamorous, practical aspects of the garden can be overlooked. Whether you want extra space for keeping yard tools, building supplies or gardening materials, don’t forget to design in space for a garden shed.
Sheds are perfect designed against walls. Put them against stable block walls or house walls or other solid walls that will help support the shed. You can use a shed as a divider between different parts of the garden or get creative and build them into fencing or use them to create their own walls.
Sheds come in many designs from simple vinyl kits to elaborate miniature houses, themed structures or home-built constructions of any style you’d like. You can invest as much or as little money or work into your garden shed as you want. You can make your shed simply useful or turn it into an asset as décor or a focal point of your landscape.
If you have the budget or are willing to do some building yourself, you can make a shed into the focal point of your whole landscape.
The important thing is to make sure you incorporate at least one shed into your landscape design plan. Even if you hire help to work on your garden, you will need tools and supplies. You’ll thank yourself for making sure you design a shed into your garden – especially when you’re working on a project and need find those materials or tools you want right there, conveniently located in your handy storage shed.
Recent Comments