A Garden Gym in Cambridge, From Design to Planning Application
Published: 4 September 2026
Reading Time: 4 minutes 10 seconds
Buying an insulated garden building isn't only about the on-site build phase. A good deal of the work happens before anything gets made: working out what you actually want, seeing it drawn up, and, where permission is needed, getting an application through. How much of that a company takes off your hands varies enormously.
Garden Spaces have been doing this for around twenty years, and they run a project from the first design conversation through to handing over the keys. A gym currently going through planning in Cambridge is a good example of what that looks like at the front end.
Working the Design Up Together
The most successful garden room projects we see start with someone coming out to talk with you and to survey the garden. Measurements get taken on site, along with the things a plan drawn from a distance would miss: where the ground changes level, how close the boundary runs, and in this case a protected tree just beyond the fence that has to be worked around. This is how Garden Spaces work.
With this project the building is 3.25m x 8.0m, sitting along the boundary at the end of the garden where an old shed stands at the moment. Inside, Garden Spaces' client wanted it arranged in three parts along its length: the gym takes the far end at 12.7sqm, opening onto a 3.25m x 3.0m deck, with a 3.9sqm shower room behind it and a 7.9sqm storeroom at the house end.
The interior design may evolve further with discussions happening about creating a mezzanine over the shower room and store, which would add more storage without taking floor from the gym. The Garden Spaces team are keen to work with clients in this way, so the finished building is right for them rather than a standard design.
Seeing It in Your Own Garden First
This is where Garden Spaces have been putting the effort lately. Rather than a drawing, or a photograph of something similar they built somewhere else, they build a full-size 3D model of the building and set it into a photograph of your own garden. Everything in it is at true scale, so what you are looking at is the real proportion of the building in the space it will occupy, not an artist's impression of it.
As we can see in these images, it starts with the garden as it is: a grey winter afternoon, bare trees, the old shed along the fence. The model goes in at its actual position and size, then finishes and textures, then the ground around it, including the terrace, the path to the door and the planting.
What you end up looking at is your own garden with the building in it, from the spot you see it from every day, and anything you'd rather change at that stage is still only a drawing revision.
What the Planners and the Neighbours See
This project needs planning permission rather than falling under Permitted Development, because it sits close to the boundary and has a pitched roof. Not every garden room company handles the planning part. Plenty of the companies featured on the Guide leave the application to the client, or bring in a planning consultant for it. Garden Spaces prepare and submit it themselves, and they go to some trouble over it.
Planning applications are decided on paper, and elevations and a block plan, accurate as they are, still ask an officer to picture the result. The worked-up images Garden Spaces produce are what close that gap, showing the finishes and how the garden will look once the landscaping is done. It helps that this is a replacement rather than an addition: the existing shed is 2.75m x 8.7m, so the new building is a little wider but shorter, and the tree is left where it is.
Neighbours get consulted on a planning application too, and the same images do a job there, reassuring them about what your plans look like and allowing them to visualise what impact the new addition will have from their side of the fence. In our years of running The Garden Room & Annexe Guide, this has proved a more common worry than you might think.
Through to Handover
Once planning permission is approved it's on to the build itself, with foundations, structure, electrics and finishes all handled by the Garden Spaces teams, and the keys handed over with the room ready to use.
Design, planning application and build through one company takes a good deal off the client, and it's worth asking the companies you talk to which aspects of the project they will handle for you. With Garden Spaces, it's the whole project.
Learn More
Garden Spaces design and build bespoke garden rooms, studios and gyms across mainland England and Wales, with sister brand Annexe Spaces covering self-contained living annexes. To talk a project through or see more of their work, visit www.gardenspaces.co.uk, call the team on 0845 387 9 387, or email info@gardenspaces.co.uk.
