Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The rush to work from home over the past few years brought with it a slew of quickly assembled, sleekly Modernist, WiFi-ready garden offices. But, say some designers, although we value the extra space, we are craving its analogue opposite: a poetic, handmade haven, wonkily knocked up from reclaimed materials with a scattering of well-worn furniture. Less a place for a hyper-productive workday, this is more of an escape. For appreciating the garden, listening to the tap of tree boughs and the clatter of rain. To have, as Andrew Marvell, writing in the pre-Gmail 17th-century, put it: “a green thought in a green shade”.At least, this was what architect Ben Stuart-Smith had in mind for his shed, one of the unlikelier highlights of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Built from scratch with woodworker Fenton Scott-Fielder, the mix of natural and antique details — pale wood surfaces and shingled roof, copper nails and porcelain light switches — captured visitors’ imagination, invoking rural quietude. (“Who wouldn’t want to hang out in here,” said one, sniffing the arboreal aromas.)Stuart-Smith’s retreat, exhibited in his father Tom’s garden installation, will be moved to a new garden for cancer support charity Maggie’s Centre at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. The idea began with a book about Ballenberg, an open-air Swiss museum of traditional, vernacular architecture. “Switzerland has a robust tradition of non-architects making small dwellings from stone and timber,” says Stuart-Smith. “There’s a simplicity and directness to them that can be lacking in modern design, which is all about straight lines — and MDF.”“We made ours from a beech tree that came down in my aunt’s garden,” he says. “Imperfection and change are built into the design. I think that’s what people responded to. It feels very human.”Interior designer Tamsin Saunders, of Home & Found, agrees. For her sequestered London refuge, she looked to artists’ studios. “I’m drawn to personal spaces, where you can see the maker’s mark. Modest buildings made for pleasure as well as work,” she says, also citing the influence of 20th-century designers Wharton Esherick and Russel Wright. “They built homes for themselves that were essentially cabins. Places they could get away from it all and contemplate nature, without the distractions of the modern world.”A path winds through a tapestry of fennel and poppies to Saunders’ “nurturing nest” built around an old chestnut tree, the roofline submerged under tangled vines and roses. “I wanted it to feel as if it had always been there, as if it had grown out of the garden,” says Saunders, who uses her shed for reading, painting and writing.Everything here is antique or reclaimed: her riposte to the “done-ness of modern homes”, she says. The carved door came from a Victorian folly; a pair of hand-painted chairs once belonged to sculptor Elisabeth Frink. Saunders’ artist daughter, Freya, painted the delicate patterns on the walls and window frames. “It smells reassuringly of oil paint, cork and wood . . . It’s a love letter to nature and the beauty of things made by hand.”In Dorset, illustrator Fee Greening’s shepherd’s hut is the teenage bedroom she never had. “This is the first time I’ve had a room of my own, where I can immerse myself in my artistic universe,” says Greening, whose repertoire of Gothic-infused dip pen-and-ink drawings includes wallpapers, fabrics and books.She bought her hideaway from a novice builder on eBay as a place to escape the “drum beats” of her musician husband in their thatched cottage. It functions as a retreat — and studio. “Here I am in muddy boots, covered in marmalade toast crumbs, sending off work to glamorous clients. I like that contrast.”The setting, in the brooding cleft of a valley on a meandering river, suits her mystical leanings: “We’re on a ley line and there is an ancient burial mound behind us. The ridgeway is a direct line that goes all the way to Stonehenge.”She began by painting the walls moss green and windows gallery red. “Then the heavens opened — and it looked like a murder scene.” Local hut specialist Plankbridge stepped in to restore the damaged roof and install the electrics. Greening designed the medieval-style arch that spans the day bed lined with PJ Harvey posters and her intricate illustrations. Her favourite childhood toy, the sinister Baba Yaga witch puppet, sits on the shelf near the carved desk she bought as an art student and lugged between rentals. “Baba Yaga’s a witch in Slavic folklore who lived in an enchanted hut. Which feels appropriate.”Greening joins an illustrious tradition of shack dwellers. In the 18th century, literary-minded landowners built rustic huts for resident hermits. Charles Dickens had a Swiss chalet. Mark Twain’s was octagonal. An entire book — Dylan Thomas and the Writing Shed by Martin Willitts Jr — is devoted to the poet’s shed. Virginia Woolf’s writing lodge at Monk’s House, East Sussex was under a chestnut tree with brick seating for watching bowls on the lawn.Designer Octavia Dickinson’s ideal is her parents’ “hut”, in Gloucestershire. More folly than shed, it sits on top of a hill with plunging valley views. The design is based on an 18th-century hermitage: a peaked thatched roof, arched windows and gnarled wooden frontage. “This is where I became interested in the relationship between buildings and landscape. Although very simple, it’s like a piece of sculpture rooted in the setting,” says Dickinson.Her father, the Old Master dealer Simon Dickinson, originally built it with the family’s late gardener as an annexe for his more esoteric (and unpopular) finds — such as fossilised elephant’s dung. Over time it has become the family’s outdoor dining room. Phones are left at the back door and food is ferried up the slope on a rattling golf buggy. There is a stone fireplace and a drinks table that once belonged to Sir Walter Scott. On summer evenings, the rustic doors are flung open. “This is about eccentricity — not technology; and feeling somewhere far away.”A shed should come as a surprise, like stumbling across a cabin in the woodsA shed should come as a surprise, like stumbling across a cabin in the woods, says landscape gardener Henrietta Courtauld. Her herbaceous west London study is a brisk “15 paces” from her back door. But it feels like a discovery. It’s hidden behind a fecund mass of mint, figs and angelica that spills across the garden path; in summer, a cloud of white roses masks the corrugated iron roof.Courtauld is co-founder with Bridget Elworthy of The Land Gardeners, who champion a natural, pesticide-free approach to horticulture. She enlisted Maria Speake of reclamation specialists Retrouvius to design her cabin. The desk is made from an old laboratory worktop; the mullioned windows are another salvaged find. Light filters through gauzy fern-printed curtains from Soane Britain. There is a daybed for furtive kips, with storage for sketches and designs underneath.“I used to have my study inside my house. When the children came home they’d dump all their schoolwork on my desk,” she says. “Even though our garden is small, having a separate space is wonderful. I feel immersed in nature.”Interior designer Susanna Thomas agrees. As the wife of a south London vicar, there were restrictions on what she could do to her house, partly owned by the church. No rules applied to the shed. Screened by flowers and foliage and within earshot of a fountain, the DIY refuge has low brass tables, antique mirrors and a long L-shaped sofa, made from rough-sawn timber, heaped with cushions. Stained-glass windows splash drops of colour on the reclaimed brick floor; antique fabric is stretched across the ceiling like a ship’s sail. The tin roof came from her sister’s farm. Here, she can do as she pleases.It appeals to her lyrical leanings. “Days begin and end here,” she says. “It’s a place to be when the grass is wet and the household is asleep . . . The rain on the roof reminds me of my childhood.”In Cumbria, automotive engineer turned woodworker George Fisher is restoring a shepherd’s hut for a client. The Victorian outbuilding, which still has its maker’s mark stamped on the axles, served as the client’s childhood den “for imaginary worlds” but was later left to moulder at the bottom of her parent’s garden. Now Fisher is turning it into a modern refuge.The hut arrived at its new home on a trailer in hundreds of pieces. The reconstruction entails straightening out 19th-century nails and restoring the battered cast-iron stove. “It would have been cheaper and easier to buy a glass box,” says Fisher. “But where is the poetry in that?”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
