What’s the worst thing about your garden? Mine is, quite simply, that it’s a mess. There are pots and tools all over the place, and half-used bags of compost. I used to think that this was because I’m a messy gardener, but over the winter, the realisation hit me: I need a shed.

I’ve got a cupboard by my back door where I keep some tools, but that’s it. And I don’t know how I thought I could just get along with this cupboard. How silly - of course I’d have pots and tools and half-used bags of compost flapping all over the garden. There’s nowhere else to put them!

So now that I’ve decided that I need a shed, I have got to start shopping for one. I have to admit that I really didn’t know where to start. Where are the best sites, what’s good value, what do I actually need for my garden? Oh, dear, I got so confused.

But then I found What Shed, a site that reviews garden sheds, plastic sheds, greenhouses and so on. It provides you with free and impartial advice for buying a garden building, which is exactly what I am after. It has an extensive director of products that meet your requirements.

So what are my requirements? Well, at first I did wonder whether an outdoor storage cabinet might be the right thing for me. I had done some searching around, but wasn’t finding much that interested me. But the good thing about What Shed is that its busy worker bees had done all the research beforehand for me, and there was a fantastic list of different storage cabinets, along with advice about what sort of setting it would work in.

I concluded that it wouldn’t work to just have a storage box, and that I needed to go big. So I found myself looking at the list of 8×10 sheds on the site, and yet again it proved its worth. The site told me that 8x10s were becoming ‘an increasingly popular choice across the United Kingdom, and it’s easy to see why’. It explained that these sheds are big enough to function not just as a storage space but also as somewhere that you can work. I really liked this idea as I work from home, but am fed up with having to shift my computer and my books from the kitchen table every evening. A large shed in which I can store both my gardening mess and my work stuff is just perfect.

There were some good, sturdy looking metal sheds, but I was in the end attracted to a wooden shed that had a window and a log store along the side, so that the woodpile that also looks a bit of a mess in the garden. I’m going to get it insulated and then I’ll be really sorted for a tidy garden and a workplace too: something I hadn’t even thought of.

I’m so pleased: now my garden looks really tidy and is really nice to sit out in. Thanks What Shed!

A collaborative article with WhatShed.

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