Creating a Garden Office to Use All Year Round

CONTRIBUTED POST

Working from home sounds great in theory, and if you’ve not done it before it’s easy to assume that it means constant pajama days, working from your comfy sofa or your bed.

Spending all winter cosy with a drink or in the garden when the weather is warm with your laptop out and feet in a paddling pool.

While the occasional day like this is definitely a perk of home working, for the most part you very much still need to treat it like you would any other job. That means getting up, getting yourself ready and sitting at a desk.

There's something about this that puts you in a productive frame of mind so you're ready to get down to business. But even when you do this, when your home is your workplace it's easy to feel like you're constantly at work (plus you can easily get distracted)!

You might end up checking emails in bed or trying to finish a report at the dinner table. To get around this, creating a physical boundary is a smart move, and setting up a dedicated garden office is one of the best ways to get that separation without losing space in your house.

When you close the door to the office at the end of each day, you know you can switch off and leave work behind in the garden. Here are a few ways you can go about it.

Make the most of the space you have

If you're lucky enough to have an old outbuilding like a summerhouse, garage or a sturdy shed at the bottom of the garden then why not make the most of it?

It's all too easy for these kinds of spaces to become dumping grounds for boxes and junk, if that's the case with you then spend a weekend having a clearout.

Get rid of the old paint cans and broken patio chairs, if you have items that are no longer useful, donate them or throw them away. Converting a shed isn't just a quick weekend paint job though.

You have to check the timber frame first, if it's solid you're good to go. You'll need rigid insulation boards cut to fit snugly between the wooden studs, and you have to insulate the floor too so the cold doesn't radiate up.

Cover it all with a vapor barrier to stop condensation rotting the wood from the inside out before screwing plasterboard over the top. If you don't have a structure already sitting there, putting up a purpose built garden room is a fantastic option.

Our homes are some of the biggest investments we make in our lifetime, so it makes sense that we'd do all we can to make it a place we genuinely want to spend time, and get the most out of every nook and cranny.

You can usually get a prefab garden room installed surprisingly quickly and they often don't even need planning permission if you stick to the height rules. And honestly, walking down the garden path with your morning coffee acts as a nice little commute to get your head in the right space! 

Sort the practical essentials

A gorgeous room at the bottom of the garden is useless if you can't actually plug your laptop in.

Dragging an extension lead across the wet grass isn't going to cut it, it's a trip hazard ads well as an electrical hazard and just isnt safe. You’ll need to get a registered electrician to run a proper armored cable underground from the house. That takes some effort upfront but it means you can plug in a decent heater, run all your equipment and actually see what you're doing with proper lighting.

Then there's the WiFi, which is always going to be an important part of your home working situation. Standard home routers rarely reach down the garden through thick exterior brick walls, and there’s nothing worse than freezing mid sentence on an important video call.

You can easily have an external ethernet cable laid in the exact same trench as your power supply, plug that directly into a wireless access point in the office and you'll have a connection that's just as fast and reliable as the one indoors.

Create a comfortable year round haven

You’ll want to use your office all year round, not just when it's actually warm outside.

Insulation traps warmth in during the winter months and stops the room turning into a sweaty greenhouse when summer hits. Because heavily insulated wooden boxes trap heat they can get incredibly stuffy, so a simple oil filled radiator on a smart plug is a lifesaver in winter.

For summer, just making sure your windows actually open wide enough to get a breeze going is essential. When it comes to the interior, your space should be personal to you, showing your style and the things you love.

Keep the walls neutral to keep your decor light and airy, and use color in your furnishings like rugs, cushions and lamps. Put up a bookcase, and use it to hold the books that you've loved and display framed photos from your travels.

You also need something that's ergonomically designed and comfortable for your back and neck, so invest in a good desk and chair that you're able to sit at for long periods.

Keep things private and organised

Family life is full of fun but can be incredibly busy and chaotic, and while the garden office gives you a place to escape all that noise, you still need to think about privacy from the outside world.

Planting some hedges with fast growing evergreens like bamboo around the perimeter creates a fantastic natural screen, just be sure to invest in a good hedge cutter to keep it tidy!

Putting up some stylish blinds or curtains is a smart move too, it stops the sun glaring on your screen during the day and hides your equipment from view at night. Make sure you've got solid locks on the doors and windows to keep everything safe.