Garden rooms can be offices, playrooms, teenage dens, start up spaces, art studios, music studios, outside kitchens, workshops or places for craft and mucking about. All are relevant, all have great use in the management of mental health and wellbeing.
After all, everybody needs a space to do their “thing”.
Recently, I designed a garden room for Tropical Plants UK, for RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The garden room showcased what we felt “buying and growing British” meant to us. To me as a designer, it meant the importance of buying into great design, it meant buying local, it meant believing in well designed and well cared for product.
We used the strapline “Keep calm and grow British”, and the vibe of James Bond and Stormzy. Many people that visited our garden room said they would love their home office or study to feel like our garden room did.
The left hand wall was fitted as a “living plant wall”. The plants with the least varigation in their leaves were placed in the darkest corners, as they needed less light, whereas the plants with the most varigation on their leaves ended up nearer the light. We purchased our light fittings from commercial retail, and a brilliant member of the team cut the light down to size and made it fit the space.
My concept was to design the garden room as a space for all members of the family, whatever their interests or age. The desk doubled up as a kids pool table – when you slid the top off. In the corner the plant case was made by a local blacksmith, who also made the desk.
There was a calming chair in the corner to read, and the wall to the right was covered in bespoke wallpaper.
Renewable energy was created by peddling an exercise bike.
The bespoke wallpaper featured a motif I drew of the Coldstream guards delivering the plants, to potential customers homes. The bespoke textiles featured the Union Jack created from a stitched motif and Tropical Plants UKs feature plant; the Monstera or Cheeseplant as a line drawing.
The mural design on the side of the garden room was the Union Jack, which I painted in an urban colour scheme on the outer wall.
We used pre-loved furniture, which we sourced locally. The opening day of the show, the client commissioned a fabulous Jamaican steel band, which got all of Chelsea in a right tropical mood!
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show