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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Garden plan advice?

10 replies

thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 07:33

Please help me as I am no good at this and I have no vision or experience! My garden is about 30 feet wide by 100 feet long. At the end is a large shed (about 20 feet side length). It is sideways on to the (rectangular) garden and sits on a proper concrete base. The shed opens onto a badly paved area which goes up to the fence. So basically the back slice of the garden is taken up with shed + paving, and is unusable for plants. In front of this area (i.e. between it and the house) is a lawn, with flower beds either side. But the back area with the shed is the bit of the garden which gets most sun. I plan to get rid of the shed, replace it with a smaller one (in the same place, but obviously taking up much less space, so it will only be sitting on part of the concrete base). All good. I can't afford to get the remaining concrete properly removed, so I was thinking that I could put down gravel across the remaining area (with proper underlay and some kind of retainer along the front), and then put in large pots or similar to grow herbs, fruit bushes, tomatoes etc there. I thought that was a relatively economical way of doing it. But now I am realising that the gravel will be a problem for the shed door opening, unless I have some sort of step or barrier, and that will be totally impractical for getting the mower (and anything else) in and out. So: any ideas of how to overcome this problem, or other ways that I can make this part of my garden (the best part!) useable, without spending really huge sums of money? The paving will be easy to remove (it isn't fixed) but the concrete is, well, concrete... Thank you in advance!

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Thickknittedsocks · 19/09/2025 07:58

If you are going to put up
a new shed you can raise it easily by sitting the main base frame on wood timbers (a comparison is decking areas are boards placed on a wooden frame). If you were to do this make sure some go under the base of the shed as the floors are usually thin and can then sag into the gap.
Alternatively you could lift the flags and use this to raise the base for any new shed so you have door clearance.

Els1e · 19/09/2025 08:01

Slightly off topic but have you thought about a summer house combined with a shed

Thickknittedsocks · 19/09/2025 08:08

Great suggestion there.
A summer house could offer more scope for usage. My friend has one and uses if after dusk in the summer and uses low energy LED light strips to give some ambient lighting ( so you can reach the glass of vino..)

DisplayPurposesOnly · 19/09/2025 08:16

How about putting your new shed somewhere else entirely? My neighbours have theirs about a third of the way down the garden, looks grand. Seems a shame to have it in the sunny bit.

thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 08:58

Yes! We have a wooden playhouse at the other end of the garden (near the house) which we are going to replace with a proper (small) summerhouse at the same time. What I really want at the top end is a bit more space to grow things that like the sun!

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thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 08:59

This is an interesting idea which I'll ponder a bit. The whole back wall of the house downstairs is glass though, and the garden isn't that long - so it might dominate the view a bit? I just find it really hard to imagine what these things look like!

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thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 09:00

V helpful ideas, thank you. Will add in to my pondering. Thank you x

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parietal · 19/09/2025 09:42

If you want a cheap solution, you could put a colourful outdoor rug over the concrete base and then a bunch of big pots and make it a sunny area to sit out with lots of Mediterranean herbs in the pots. Then take up all the paving and use that area for your veg garden.

ThreePears · 19/09/2025 17:29

thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 08:59

This is an interesting idea which I'll ponder a bit. The whole back wall of the house downstairs is glass though, and the garden isn't that long - so it might dominate the view a bit? I just find it really hard to imagine what these things look like!

It already does dominate the view. You have a garden with flower beds down the sides, and your eyeline is immediately drawn straight down to the bottom of the garden. And the lovely, picturesque shed. 😂

thefatladyissinging · 19/09/2025 19:01

ThreePears · 19/09/2025 17:29

It already does dominate the view. You have a garden with flower beds down the sides, and your eyeline is immediately drawn straight down to the bottom of the garden. And the lovely, picturesque shed. 😂

Haha I get you - but there are plants screening it atm!!

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