Garden Sheds

It seems like every garden in England has a garden shed. Since time immemorial, garden sheds have been an indispensable feature, usually tucked away in a little corner of the garden, and usually stuffed full of garden equipment - the lawnmower, forks and spades, old tins of pain, sacks of potatoes.

If you own a garden shed and, after a few years, it's not overflowing with junk, you're doing something wrong, because a garden shed really isn't something just to decorate your garden, it's an extra building which deserves to be put to practical use every single day of the year.

Today there are lots of different types of garden shed, and this hub gives a brief rundown of the different types available, their benefits and their disadvantages.

A wooden garden shed is the most traditional type of shed, and by far the most popular type of shed.  Not only is it long lasting, but it looks good in the garden.  Made of natural materials (wood!) it usually blends in beautifully with any garden.  The cost of a standard wooden shed is usually quite low, but is still more expensive than most other types of shed.  The big disadvantage (a hassle really) is that the wood needs to be treated every few years to ensure that it remains waterproof.

The plastic garden shed is a relative newcomer to the garden scene - well, if you count 20-30 years as being relatively new.  These sheds are made of plastic or vinyl and usually come in an easy to assemble kit form complete with easy to read (hah!) garden shed plans.  Because plastic garden sheds only contain a few large panels of plastic, they are really easy to assemble - you could easily finish the job in a day.  The downside really is aesthetic - despite great improvements, they really don't look all that attractive, and they stand out as modern and man made. 

The metal garden shed is a bit of an oddity, especially in England.  They are, like plastic sheds, usually quite low cost and easy to construct - again, they're usually made of a few flat panels, often corrugated iron or aluminum, that can be thrown up in a day.  But they haven't really generated much mass market appeal among English gardeners, who have traditionally preferred sheds made of wood.  Instead, they have proved much more popular in the industrial context, and you'll see them on industrial estates across the land.  The biggest disadvantages of metal garden sheds, to my mind, is that they rust quickly in the English climate, and that on those rare days when the sun blazes down over England, they quickly trap heat, and become very - some might say dangerously - hot inside.