A garden room for a long, narrow garden by Garden Spaces
A 4.77m x 6m Thermowood-clad garden room in St Albans that uses the depth of the garden, with a shower room and a store hidden behind a clad door.
We wrote recently about wide, shallow garden rooms and why they suit wide gardens. They use the width available without shortening the length of the garden. A long, thin garden needs a different shape.
This garden room in St Albans by Garden Spaces is a great example. At 4.77m wide and 6m deep, it sits at the end of the garden with space left alongside it, and it makes use of the depth the garden has rather than its width. It’s also a great example of a project that combines an insulated room for year-round use with discreet storage.
At a glance
- Size: 4.77m wide x 6m deep and 2.5m high, with a main room of 16.9sqm.
- Built for: a garden room with a shower room and an integral store, in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
- Construction: SIPs on ground screw foundations with adjuster plates, installed close to a tree.
- Finishes: Thermowood cladding on every elevation, anthracite aluminium bi-fold doors and a canopy with downlights; plastered walls, laminate flooring and air conditioning inside.
- Company: Garden Spaces, with a turnkey service from design to the service connections.
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Using the depth of the garden
Inside, the main room is 5.68m long and 2.95m wide. It runs back from the bi-fold doors towards the far boundary, so the building takes up the garden’s length rather than its width, and a path still runs down the side to the back of the plot.
Along the other side, a 1.36m-wide strip holds two smaller spaces: a shower room at the back and a store at the front.
A shower room and a hidden store
The shower room is reached through a door in the main room. It has a walk-in shower with a glass door, a vanity unit and WC, a chrome towel radiator and stone-effect vinyl flooring, with a small opening window for fresh air.
The store in front of it is 4.3sqm and opens from the garden through what is, in effect, a secret door. It’s clad in the same Thermowood as the wall around it, so it blends in and is hard to see. From the garden, the front of the building reads as glazing and timber, with no sign of a shed door.
Two finishes for two uses
The difference between the two spaces is clear as soon as the doors open. The main room is finished to a high specification, plastered and decorated, with a wood-effect laminate floor, recessed downlights and an air conditioning unit for heating and cooling.
In the store, the OSB face of the SIP panels is left exposed. It’s a hard-wearing finish for a space that will take garden tools and outdoor kit, and there’s a light inside so it can be used after dark.
Light from both ends
Light comes into the main room from both ends. A wall of 2.7m anthracite aluminium bi-folds fills most of the front and folds back to open the room to the lawn. A 1.2m letterbox-style window sits high in the rear wall, bringing in a little extra light at the far end of the room, and it’s easy to open for ventilation. The air conditioning keeps the room comfortable on hotter days too.
Outside, a 400mm canopy runs along the front with downlights set into it, above a composite step the width of the building.
Built close to a tree
The room sits close to a large tree. Garden Spaces built it on ground screw foundations with adjuster plates to bring the building level. Ground screws need far less digging than a concrete base, which suits a site like this. At 2.5m tall, the building has a flat roof and Thermowood cladding on every elevation.
A turnkey service
Garden Spaces offer a turnkey service. They handle the whole project for their clients, from the first design ideas through any approvals that are needed, right through to the connections to the main services. Here, that included the groundworks and the waste and water connections for the shower room, an armoured cable for the electrics, and a CAT6 data cable to the house.
Learn more about Garden Spaces
Garden Spaces design and build bespoke garden rooms across mainland England and Wales. To see more buildings that combine a room with storage, explore the rooms with storage section of www.gardenspaces.co.uk, call 0845 387 9 387, or email info@gardenspaces.co.uk.
