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Sowing your own seeds, watching the sprouts grow, admiring the flowers and fruits you’ve cared for – there is nothing quite like starting a garden. If you’ve been longing to start your own growing venture, but need a place to house it, why not consider a potting shed?
Potting Sheds straddle the line between the utility of a spacious wooden shed and the comfy light of a glass-fitted greenhouse. They’re not as expensive, but still offer almost everything a greenhouse does – and with some added benefits too!
If you love gardening and growing, but don’t want to make the leap to an expensive greenhouse, then there’s no better option than a potting shed. You may just find that they’re perfect for you.
Interested? Read on to find out more!
What Is A Potting Shed?
A potting shed is a garden shed with a design tailored for growing and planting.
One half of the garden building looks like a regular shed, while the other side of the structure is built to include a set of tall windows and a long shelf. This shelf, also known as the potting bench, is where you can plant, prune, and do all your vital gardening work. It’s built at waist height so it’s easy to reach.
The large windows allow lots of light into the building, giving your plants all the sunlight they need to grow and thrive. They usually extend from the roof all the way down to the base of the shed to best allow light to enter the building.
The raised shelves are especially handy as they let you access your plant pots and beds while still standing up. This means you can do all your gardening without needing to bend over.
Better still, potting sheds are more than able to perform one purpose. If you need a little bit of storage space for your tools or gardening equipment, the other side of your potting shed can fulfill that purpose.
Potting sheds are usually compared to their close cousins, glass greenhouses. A greenhouse is the go-to for those of us who want to get into growing. But that popularity does not mean it is better than a potting shed.
Let’s compare them side-by-side on the factors that matter.
Quick Comparison.
Greenhouses are often looked upon as paradise for those with a green thumb and a love for all things that grow. But potting sheds can be just as good, if not better, for growers.
Depending on what you’re looking for, one of these hybrid sheds could be a better pick. Let’s have a look at how potting sheds stack up against greenhouses.
Utility
One big advantage potting sheds have over their glass cousins is their general utility. Their half-and-half design lets them split their space and put it to use for just about anything you can think of.
Use it simply as storage for plant pods, seeds, and garden tools. Perhaps put up a rack of extra shelves and grow even more plants. Or change things up and use the other half of the shed as a nice sitting area!
The large window and natural warmth of the potting shed makes it the perfect spot to sit and watch your plants soak in the sunlight. Then you’ll have both a place to grow and a garden retreat. Just make sure you open the doors and ventilate the shed while you’re in there!
Warmth
You’ll be surprised to learn that potting sheds withhold heat better than traditional greenhouses. Their wooden walls and thick roofing are better at keeping in heat when compared to glass.
The result is that they keep much warmer both throughout the year and, more importantly, during the winter.
If you wanted to go the extra mile, you could insulate your shed to keep your plants even more comfortable during those colder months. Insulation helps to trap heat inside your shed and could be a worthwhile investment.
Sunlight
Sunlight is where greenhouses have the advantage over potting sheds.
While glass greenhouses allow natural light in from all angles, potting sheds use only a series of large windows on one side of their structure.
While these windows are big and often provide enough light to grow whatever you’d like to, you’ll need to ensure that they’re facing in the right direction. If the windows face south and have lots of space in front, your potting shed will capture all the sunlight you need.
As long as you follow this important step, you’ll never notice the difference!
Fragility
Worried about the damage a rogue football or mischievous pet could cause to your growing space? Then choosing a potting shed is the way to go.
While the glass of a greenhouse can break, the smaller windows and reliable wooden structure of a potting shed makes it more robust.
With a safer place to stay, you won’t have to worry about the kind of damage your plants might sustain if the unexpected happens.
Doing repairs is easier too, and will likely be something you can do at home if you have any basic woodworking tools and a bit of experience. A broken greenhouse will need a professional to mend, while a damaged potting shed only needs a few minutes of your time and it’ll be good as new again.
Price
If affordability is a factor you want or need to consider, then look no further than a potting shed.
Lots of large panes of double-glazed glass makes greenhouses exceedingly expensive, as well as tricky to install. But potting sheds don’t suffer from the same problem. Their wood-based design makes them much cheaper and very easy to build, maintain, and install into your garden.
You also have more options with where you put a potting shed, as they don’t need a purpose-built paving foundation – a wooden board base will work fine. If you’re looking for an affordable way to invest in your love of growing, this is an option you shouldn’t overlook.
Just a simple comparison shows how useful a potting shed could be for you, and how it could even be an improvement on a greenhouse!
For beginner or even dedicated growers, a potting she can provide everything that you need without the hassle of a glass greenhouse. If this has caught your eye, and you’re wondering what you might need to keep in mind if you want your own growing shed, then we’ve got you covered as well.
Let’s look through a brief checklist of the things you’ll need to remember if you want to buy one of these hybrid sheds.
Things To Consider
- Make sure your garden has a suitable location for your potting shed. Your potting shed needs to be facing in a direction that will let in as much natural light as possible. The ideal direction to face it is south, so it receives sunlight all day long. East, or west, or between works fine too – just try to avoid pointing it north.
- Consider which base you’ll use. Potting sheds have more flexibility than greenhouses in where they can be based, but that doesn’t mean you can just drop one anywhere. Have an idea of which kind of base you want to use, whether that’s decking, concrete, or paving.
- Know what you’ll grow! This is the most important part of the potting shed, and something you’ll definitely want to think about before you buy one. You could invest in a beautiful spring-blooming flower box, or transform your potting bench into a vegetable garden. With the heat letting you keep warm-loving fruits such as tomatoes, there’s no limit to what you can grow.
Weighing It Up
You might already be enticed by the idea of getting a potting shed. Imagine getting your fingers dirty planting your own courgettes and tomatoes, then harvesting them and making homemade ratatouille. It’s a dream that could easily become reality!
A potting shed has so much to offer, so let’s skim back through everything that’s great about them:
- Potting sheds are a great deal cheaper than greenhouses, while still providing an ideal place to grow!
- They’re more robust and easier to repair than their glass cousins, meaning you can spend all your time looking after your plants!
- Potting sheds are super effective at keeping themselves warm throughout the year.
- They have plenty of space inside for you to use in whichever way you want. Store garden tools, equipment, toys – or convert it into somewhere to sit and relax!
- The potting bench is raised to let you garden without crouching or bending down.
If you want to please your gardening temptations and spruce up your garden, a potting shed is the right place to go.
If they’ve caught your eye, and you’re wondering where you could get one, look no further. Shop for our potting sheds using the button below – you can even customise which colour you want it to be painted!
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