Cara Davies remembers the day the city inspector came to take a final look at her garden before signing off on the building permit: “He came around the corner and he was quite surprised—and he said, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a little bit of paradise.’” The garden shed gets the credit.
No one would have described the .3-acre property in downtown St. Helena as paradise in 1999 when Davies and her husband, Tom, moved into the Napa Valley house. “There wasn’t much here, just a little lawn with a deck, so we completely redid the backyard,” she said. Landscape architect Josh Chandler designed the garden as well as the galvanized shed, which owes its charm both to its unusual proportions and facade of corrugated steel panels salvaged from old chicken coops.
Photography by Mimi Giboin for Gardenista.
Above: Chandler designed the 10-by-10-foot square shed to sit alongside Davies’ edible garden, next to the swimming pool. The shed’s unusual height–it’s 20 feet tall–and peaked roof make it the center of attention. Above: The shed’s siding is vintage galvanized steel panels, salvaged from a former farm with chicken sheds that dated to the 1920s. Growing next to the shed is salvia whose deep purple color is intensified by the gray backdrop. Above: The shed sits on a solid concrete pad etched with lines to evoke the look of pavers. A path of permeable pea gravel leads to the shed. (For more ideas about how to use pea gravel in the garden, see Hardscaping 101: Pea Gravel.)
I have been coerced into learning new skills and trying new hobbies for as long as I’ve been with my husband. When we were in college, he pressured me into skiing. Throwing oneself down a steep mountain, in freezing temperatures, strapped to skinny planks, is not something that my immigrant family ever thought I’d need to learn. I survived, even had fun, but from then on, I knew better than to automatically agree to whatever “fun idea” he had up his sleeve.
Here are some things my hobbyist husband has proposed we try that I’ve firmly said no to: ice climbing, a rafting trip, a bike tour, surfing, marathon running, ballroom dancing, a greenhouse, a pizza oven. Things I’ve grudgingly said yes to: fly fishing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, curling, paddle-boarding, rock climbing, a Dead & Co. concert, a dog. I don’t regret any of my decisions, but aside from our pup (who is now my favorite child), I haven’t truly taken to any of his obsessions. They’re his fixations, not mine.
Recently, though, after much lobbying on his part, I agreed to have a sauna built in our small yard—and now I’m almost as obsessed as he is. Maybe that’s because sauna bathing doesn’t involve special gear or physical training, and the only skill you really need to have is to be able to sit still. But I think there’s more to it. Here’s how I learned to love sweating in a claustrophobic space.
Above: Our Finnleo Northstar Sauna. We opted for a dark stain in lieu of paint. If you’re interested in building your own, my husband tells me that Trumpkin’s Notes on Building a Sauna is considered the bible for constructing a traditional Finnish sauna. If you’re interested in reading the dense manual, you can find it here. And if you’re not, congratulations—you have a life.
1. Use it as stealth therapy.
Our sauna is very small, but my husband and I can comfortably use it at the same time without the threat of mingling sweat. It also helps that the bench faces a wall with a glass door and window, both of which nicely frame a corner of our garden. The tight confines also happen to be conducive to having all sorts of discussions with your partner. There’s something about sitting next to each other, but not facing each other, that takes the sting out of touchy subjects and the annoyance out of mundane ones. Plus, in such a hushed, tight space, raised voices are simply not an option.
“Everything I do is inspired by Japan, but I’m deliberately not making it all Japanese,” explains Hobson. “There’s no koi pond or red bridges.” Not only does Hobson eschew any decorative Japanese elements, he avoids ornaments altogether. “For me, a Japanese garden is creating a sense of a landscape—an idealized landscape—within the plot. If you bring in ornaments, you ruin the magic of scale. Whereas, if all you’ve got is plants, you can create a sense (if you squint and after a couple of drinks) that maybe you’re looking out into a deep forest.”
Hobson has successfully created this illusion of landscape within his small space. Looking out the windows of the home he shares with his wife, Keiko, and their son, or gazing at photographs of Hobson’s green, layered garden, it’s hard to believe that it’s not much bigger than a tennis court.
When Hobson and his wife bought the house, the backyard had four sheds, a mismatched bunch of overgrown conifers, and a ton of concrete paths. They ripped it all out, leaving just the evergreen hedge that blocks the view from a neighboring building. Hobson commissioned a local carpenter to build a single new shed inspired by a Japanese “summer house” at the back of the plot. Then he planted dozens of evergreen and coniferous shrubs and trees that he has been training and pruning for the last fourteen years. The result is a garden that feels like its own miniature world, full of living sculptures.
Let’s take a tour of Hobson’s garden, which he photographed himself. (You can follow him on Instagram @niwakijake.)
Above: Every year Hobson lets the grass grow long and mows a new path through it. “Zigzagging through the garden is a really Japanese thing,” he notes. “You never just go straight into a house.” At right are some of Hobson’s undulating boxwood and a Phillyrea latifolia, which Hobson calls a “cloud-pruned tree.” (He had been growing it for years at his parents home before moving it to the garden.)
Above: The Willow Pod by Willow with Roots is available by commission.
Willow with Roots is a mother-daughter team in Worcestershire who grow their own willow, hold weaving workshops, and sell their wares—think lamp shades, baskets, and trays—via an online shop. They also do bespoke work, like the otherworldly Willow Pod, above.
Dreaming Spires Playhouse
Above: Needham’s largest construction, The Dreaming Spires Willow Playhouse ($3,285) is scaled to accommodate parents as well as kids: it’s 8 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 6 feet tall. She also makes Onion-shaped Dens that start at $767).
Judith Needham of Surrey, England, is another willow weaver who makes her own designs (including baskets), and came up with her first playhouse for her own daughter. Needham’s willow comes from growers in Somerset, England: “It’s grown specifically for basket making; the method of cultivation, rather than the variety, is what makes the material suitable for weaving. The technique is called coppicing—each plant is cut right down to the ground during harvest in the spring leaving just a stump. New growth quickly springs from the trunk. These stems are long, thin, unbranching, and very pliable. Some plants are left to grow for two or three years to yield ten-f00t-long stems, which is what I need for playhouses, but most are cut annually making it the ultimate sustainable crop.”
For twig playhouses that are left outdoors, Needham recommends applying an annual coat of linseed oil, and says with this protective finish, they should last for six to eight years. Most of her customers are in the UK, but to date, she’s also shipped playhouses to the States.
Hocus Pocus
Above: Chapel Hill, NC-based environmental artist Patrick Dougherty roams the country creating elaborate, site-specific woven sapling installations.
One of his specialities is play constructions, most of which he builds on the grounds of museums, art centers, and colleges, but on occasion, Dougherty accepts private commissions. One such is Hocus Pocus, shown here, a willow structure at Bittersweet Farms in Ennice. NC. Photograph by Robyn Dreyer. Go to Stickwork to see more and learn about his process.
For more fanciful children’s play structures, see:
N.B.: This post was first published July 2017. It’s been updated with new products, photos, prices, and links.
Byró Architekti’s smallest project to date is its biggest scene stealer. Located in a garden enclave just 20 minutes from Prague’s city center, the shed was built on the foundation of a dilapidated cottage. The owners use the property as a retreat and wanted an outbuilding that serves as a library, gathering space, shelter from the rain, and extra bedroom, while communing with the surrounding greenery.
To tick all those boxes, architects Jan Holub and Tomáš Hanus devised a pavilion with built-in bookshelves, a sleeping loft, and a façade that pops up to fully connect indoors and out. It’s a practical folly.
Above: “The building is designed as a wooden structure in a two-by-four construction system,” write the architects. It’s finished with blackened spruce cladding aka shou sugi ban. Above: Doors fold back to reveal a polycarbonate window. Above: The structure’s defining feature is a delightful surprise.
“We thought about how to connect the building as closely as possible to the surrounding garden, and we ultimately came up with the idea of a folding panel that allows one side of the house to completely open,” write Holub and Hanus.”This way, the interior seamlessly transitions to the outdoors, with the garden penetrating the building, creating a kind of paraphrase of a garden loggia, which was our architectural inspiration.”
All week, we’re republishing some of our favorite Garden Visits that have a personal connection to our writers. No public gardens here, no vast estates, no professionally designed landscapes—just the backyards, vegetable patches, and flower beds that remind our writers of home. This story by contributor Kendra Wilson is from October 2017.
Sometimes a distant but well-loved place is even better than you remember. Weston, CT, has reached mythical status with the younger members of my family ever since we were uprooted to live in London, England, signaling the end of long summers, muggy evenings, and the sounds of crickets (and mosquitoes).
Going back to Connecticut from Grand Central Station this summer was hardly an ordinary commute; fortunately our destination included Dirt Road Farm, the 5.5-acre home of farmers Phoebe Cole-Smith and her husband, Mike Smith. With lunch in the barn overlooking the garden and circa-1830 saltbox house, the dream of a perfect Connecticut setting was very much alive.
Above: A grapevine shelters the kitchen patio of chef and farmer Phoebe Cole-Smith in Weston, CT.
Like many residents of Weston (and Westport, where commuters got off the train), Phoebe found Connecticut by way of New York, needing more space for her family. With a background in food and a training at the International Culinary Center, Phoebe’s days in publishing in the city were left behind as she made country life work for her. The small farm that she runs with husband Mike Smith offers something for local people, or those chasing a dream of New England, in the form of brilliantly conceived barn suppers.
Above: A sturdy pergola supports the grapevines.
Weston in the 1960s and early ’70s was a small town of farms and an “artist’s colony” that included New Yorker cartoonists, authors, and actors. The ratio has changed but this is one farm that has been added, not subtracted, having achieved farm status in 2011.
This week, as the Chelsea Flower Show goes viral on every media outlet, we take a look at Tom Stuart-Smith, the comeback—after an absence of 14 years. A super-heavyweight of British garden design, Stuart-Smith’s show resumé describes his work as combining “naturalism with modernity, and built forms with romantic planting,” before reminding us that one of his clients was HM the Queen. And just to recap: He has now won nine gold medals at Chelsea, including three Best in Show. Stuart-Smith’s gardens caused such a stir in the 1990s that their legacy is still very much with us: water-filled tanks of Corten steel, peeling river birch, cloud pruning, and strongly disciplined color all come to mind.
Stuart-Smith has implied during his long absence that he didn’t have a compelling reason to do another garden on Main Avenue. He was lured by Project Giving Back, a private funding collective (who last year bagged the reluctant star Cleve West). One of PGB’s conditions for funding—that a show garden must be permanently re-sited afterwards in a place where it can do good—is also part of its attraction to garden designers. They make a garden for a charity of their choice, then Chelsea’s publicity machine puts it under a giant spotlight. Tom Stuart-Smith’s show garden for the National Garden Scheme is about the joy of garden visiting and garden making. It’s that simple.
Photography for Gardenista by Jim Powell.
Above: Seasonal favorites, foxgloves and cow parsley make the grade on Tom Stuart-Smith’s Chelsea garden.
The National Garden Scheme is a staple of summer for British gardeners, allowing them to look in other people’s backyards, while having a bit of tea and cake—all for a nominal fee. Since this is a transaction that takes places all over the British Isles, from spring until autumn, the NGS makes a lot of money, which is donated to nursing and health charities. It is also inherently “good for you” to be out in a garden, gazing at plants and listening to birds singing, so the benefits are exponential.
Stuart-Smith is a reliable purveyor of unusual plants in his gardens but also, the very, very familiar, which are the elements that will be reproduced all over the world: towering white foxgloves in a sea of cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), almost shockingly “common” since it’s found on every wayside and, now that the Royal Parks allow unmowed areas, in every park.
Above: A stone sink is filled with rain water, which works its way down from the roof (of oak shingles), funneled into a terracotta pipe and then fed from the bottom. It is surrounded by Farfugium giganteum.
Since we are talking about garden visiting, this is a good one to walk on, should you be so lucky; it is lightly shaded by three multi-stemmed hazels, which give an idea of coppicing, a practice which only real gardeners understand the value of, since hazel re-sprouts after cutting down almost to the ground, providing useful straight poles.
On describing his last woodland garden for Chelsea, Stuart-Smith said that he uses repeats of species, focusing on texture and form, over color. This still rings true, and in the 2024 garden he takes his restricted palette to the point of monochrome, and a slightly chilly, detached air. But if you look, and then look again, the garden reveals itself. The plant basics haven’t changed much either, with iris, umbellifers, astrantia and hardy geraniums also making a comeback.
Currently dreaming of adding a sweet Bonni outbuilding to my garden (even though there are two insurmountable obstacles in my way: I don’t have the space, and the company is based across the Atlantic in Oxfordshire, UK).
Bonni’s prefab outbuildings are both good-looking and planet-friendly. Mainly manufactured off-site, the structures are made from materials sourced within a 10-mile radius of company headquarters. The wood is FSC-certified, brought in from the owner’s nearby family timber business. The roof is corrugated steel, a durable and recyclable material. The buildings are meant to be powered by either solar, wind, or biomass energy. And the construction calls for building on stilts instead of a carbon-intensive concrete foundation.
Above: Bonni offers a pitched-roof design as well as a flat-roof option (pictured), and each is available in small, medium, or large sizes. Above: This is the large size, which measures 4.9 x 7.4 meters and features two sets of French doors. Clients can choose from corrugated steel or timber for the exterior cladding, in vertical or horizontal design, left in its natural form or painted in one of six available colors.
Above: Add-ons include a wood-burning stove, kitchenette, and furniture. You can find the range of offerings here.
Above: Circular windows are in every Bonni outbuilding. Above: A sweet powder room can be added. Above: The small size, perfect for a home office.
