BoomerGirl Diary

Potting sheds are starting to get the respect that they deserve. Gone are the days of unimaginative structures purchased at a big box store and made of “wood-like” materials.

This spring, avid gardeners will be committing days and weeks of sweat, labor and imagination to their plots. They don’t want all that work in creating the perfect atmosphere ruined by a pedestrian or unsightly box. Serious gardeners are devoting as much attention to the potting shed as they would to any other part of their actual house, transforming them beyond merely being a place to store rakes and pot plants and into buildings that complement the surrounding garden and flow with the entire outdoor design.

The language of the garden

Sitting neatly on Mikell Adams’ sloping yard is a gorgeous potting shed dressed in shades of greens with an enticing bright red door. Adams selected the shed so that it would blend effortlessly into the landscape and beside the house, which is painted in the same tones. In fact the shed and the house look as if they were built at the same time, though the shed came many years later.

It is important to let a garden be dynamic, changing and to let those changes come from the objects themselves, believes Adams.

“It (the garden) will speak in its own time and in its own language, if one is quiet and still enough to hear it. Placement of objects in my garden are done mostly by the way it feels. That is the language and what works for me.”

Adams has transplanted the shed to various garden spots until she found its present location that seems to melt right into the landscape, a tranquil haven of babbling brooks, rushing water falls, meandering paths and Buddha images in repose. The shed fits right into the atmosphere, as nonchalantly as if it were an azalea or a Japanese maple.

Outside serenity, inside whimsy

A potting shed is successfully incorporated into an environment if it looks like a natural extension of everything around it. Mission accomplished for Joan Stone, who put in an elaborate shed with leaded glass windows, French doors and a slew of other intricacies in the challenging space of a long, narrow backyard.

Stone was successful because she gave a good deal of consideration before any nail was driven into any board. “We spent a fair amount of time planning where and how this structure should be placed in the landscape. We had to remove a 20-foot cedar and eight-inch caliper Hackberry tree — neither tree had much landscape value — to make room for the shed. Its setting, nestled into the remaining grouping of established trees, really makes it look like it was meant to be there, or that it had always been there.”

With the setting complete, Stone has turned her eye to the shed’s interior. “It will develop as elements are ‘found’ or as the function of the structure evolves. We have already collected some 100-year-old bead board acquired through a friend for a wainscot. While I’m never sure how the final design will end up, we are keeping our eyes open for an old large school chalkboard or maybe several pieces of old ceiling tin. We drug home a large canvas school map from 1885 that could possibly find its way onto a wall ... because it’s a shed, we can be as creative or whimsical as we want to be.”

Midwest vernacular

Dan Lattin’s shed has seen a lot of history. Built sometime in the 1920s, the shed has been used by his family to shelter a German Shorthair as she gave birth to puppies, as a chicken coop with a built-in chimney to keep the chicks warm through the winters and now as a potting shed.

Lattin’s wife, Ferrol, inspired the shed’s latest reincarnation. “I told Dan not to let this little building go to rack and ruin. It is such a great example of a vernacular building to the Midwest farming community.”

So the Lattins have begun restoring the shed for the spring gardening season. But Dan still sometimes looks at it and sees the past. A memory comes into his mind from a decades-old renovation as he stands beside the shed: “It was 1952 and my dad had asked us to paint the shed. My brother and I started fighting, my dad said, ‘Dan, you paint this side,’ and told my brother to paint the other side. After awhile my brother came over to my side of the shed. He had painted his entire torso, face and arms red. Dad grabbed my brother and smothered him with gas to remove the lead-based paint, boy it was a dramatic moment!”

Cozy home, cozy shed

For 12 years, Susan Novo-Gradic has been landscaping and designing, building and remodeling her home to stamp it with her signature style. Novo-Gradic gravitates toward a Southwestern flair and has created her cozy home in the country with sweeping views of native grasses, grazing horses and sculptures.

Her potting shed is relatively new but blends in with the house and landscaping. Novo-Gradic says she wanted a structure that was “small and useful” but she wasn’t going to ignore style. “It has a little porch, a pitched roof with cathedral ceiling, glass bricks, just a lot of touches that make it much more than just a shed.”

The brightly-lit potting shed even has skylights and a southern exposure aiding the plethora of Agaves, Birds of Paradise, palms, monstera and cacti that have called this shed home through the winter. The shed is powered and has a little radio to keep Novo-Gradic company through the potting work. It also has heat, though there is little need as the sun exposure and high-grade construction keep the little house comfy and warm.

“I love this little house. It has my touch to it which, granted, made me spend more money on it’s construction, but it is a structure that I want to keep around forever,” says Novo-Gradic.