The Organic Garden. Allan Shepherd

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СКАЧАТЬ than the sort of factory-made furniture you can buy in chain stores, but you can guarantee what you’re getting is unique. Agricultural and smallholding shows, green fairs, festivals and other events are always good places to find locally made handcrafted wooden furniture. Websites such as www.allotmentforestry.com, www.coppice-products.co.uk and www.greenwoodcentre.org.uk offer courses and directories of people making and selling handmade wooden furniture.

      In Wales the Welsh Timber Forum produce a buyer’s guide to buying (www.welshtimberforum.co.uk). If you go down the mass-produced route always look for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) symbol (see page 48), but also check whether the finished product has been made in Britain. Sometimes wood is shipped from Scandinavia to China, turned into furniture and shipped back again. This all seems a bit crazy when British-made furniture grown from UK or European wood is available. A UK or European product also gives you certain guarantees about the way the workers are treated. (See also pages 26–29.)

      What is the FSC?

      The FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) ensures that natural forests are conserved, that endangered species and their habitats are protected, and that forest workers and forest-dependent communities are respected. Unlike other certification schemes, the FSC was set up independent of industry and has broad support from conservation groups, indigenous communities and forest product buyers. It gives equal decision-making rights to economic, social and environmental interests in its governing structure and standard-setting process. It is the preferred standard for gardening organisations such as the RHS and conservation bodies like The World Wide Fund for Nature and the RSPB. At www.fsc-uk.org, their buyer’s guide includes a league table of mainstream retailers who stock FSC furniture. Top (A) ratings (100 per cent of furniture FSC-approved) go to B&Q, Asda, Wyevale, Tesco and Marks & Spencer.

      The rainforest in our gardens

      Felled timber from rainforests is often mixed with other fibres and hidden in chipboard products or turned into garden fencing. Rainforests are biodiversity hotspots, which means they are wonderfully species rich, and their destruction can lead to the extinction of whole species. There are only 60,000 gorillas left in the world and 5,000 are lost every year as their forest habitats are cleared. At this rate they will be gone within twelve years. We can help by avoiding products that may contain wood from felled rainforests. Always look for the FSC label. The Greenpeace online Garden Furniture Guide is the most comprehensive guide to finding FSC-approved garden furniture products: www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests. Think about contributing to some of the charitable organisations that buy up areas of rainforest to save them from logging (try www.rainforest-alliance.org). Boycotting is more effective if it is backed up with positive action to preserve and protect.

      It’s impossible to list all UK manufacturers of ethical garden furniture but here are a few for starters: www.britisheco.com, www.handmadehammocks.co.uk, www.hammocks.co.uk (Fairtrade hammocks from Mexico), www.pendlewood.com. I also liked www.tinglondon.com who make stylish hammocks out of recycled seat belts. If you look at only one website check out www.reelfurniture.co.uk, an imaginative company making entirely handcrafted furniture from old cable reels. Visit www.rd.se and www.purves.co.uk for cardboard seats, www.readymademag.com for plans for a turf sofa, www.salvo.co.uk for salvage merchants, and www.reuze.co.uk, www.marmaxproducts.co.uk and www.theurbangarden.co.uk for information about recycled products; www.ethical-junction.org is a general link to sites for green and ethical products. Enough already!

      Shed’s dead

      I’ve never been a builder. My knowledge of carpentry is small. My aptitude for construction minimal. At school I got a U at woodwork, despite the fact I skipped PE for two years to take extra lessons. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, I think I’m going to build my own shed. This isn’t a temporary thought: this is a long-held belief, stretching back a decade. One of the reasons I chose the garden I have now is the potential for it to house a shed on stilts. A shed on stilts! As if the task of constructing a shed on flat land wasn’t hard enough. Nevertheless at some point a shed will be built and I will do the building. Why? Because really I want to build a house, and building an eco-shed is the first step.

      Why ‘shed’s dead’?

      Apart from wanting to reference Bruce Willis’s performance in Pulp Fiction, why have I called this section Shed’s Dead? After all, a shed is a wonderful thing – probably the closest thing gardeners have to a cultural icon. It’s a triumph of simplicity and efficiency, combining as it does several important gardening functions within its four thin walls. Being a simple, effective place to store tools is probably the least important job it does. Most non-gardeners wonder what the allure of the shed can be: it’s such a drab, soulless-looking place from the outside. Step inside, however. and you’re immediately in another world. A place where a deckchair, a bottle of wine or a flask of tea is always close by. Where a wind-up radio can be kept wound and primed for a Sunday afternoon of Gardeners’ Question Time on Radio Four. Where the world and its wife can just go and play somewhere else, quite frankly.

      I don’t just want a shed, I want a home office with a wood stove and a place to sling a hammock if I feel like sleeping over.

      So why would I wish the shed dead? Well, I think we can do better. The first clue came midway through the last paragraph. Why are sheds so drab and soulless? Look at any of the seemingly endless number of shed websites and you will see the same bland carboncopy boxes coming up again and again. They don’t give any clue to the personality of the owner. They don’t blend in with a garden. They don’t add anything apart from convenience to a space. No character. No inspiration. No sense of imagination. A shed is a thing to be hidden by plants, to be shoved into the corners of a garden, to be rendered invisible if possible. Or in the worst gardens, just placed without any thought whatsoever so it sticks out like a tower block amongst tiny rows of terraced-house vegetables. A towering example of mass-produced modernity.

      All this could be forgiven if sheds met high environmental criteria, but unless you buy an FSC-approved shed you don’t really know what you’re getting. Buying the average shed is a journey into the unknown. Imagine you’ve just created your beautiful eco-friendly garden. Everything’s carefully laid out to be pleasing to the eye and the soul. And now you need some storage. Well, the average shed is just not doing it for me.

      The company Forest Garden supplies DIY shops and garden centres with wood products for the garden, including sheds, using timber cut from FSC-approved UK forests owned by the Forestry Commission. Look out for their label and visit www.forestgarden.co.uk/stockists.asp for the nearest place to buy. Also try www.grange-fencing.com for timber sheds and summerhouses. B&Q and Focus both sell FSC-approved sheds. Try www.greatlittlegarden.co.uk for a range of European-grown FSCapproved timber products, as well as www.simply-summerhouses.co.uk. There are now a number of recycled plastic sheds on the market. Look at: www.langhalegardens.co.uk, www.hudsonwright.net/plastic-storage-sheds.htm, www.heskethsplastics.com/recycled.htm.

      What I haven’t said yet is that I don’t just want a shed, I want a home office with a wood stove and a place to sling a hammock if I feel like sleeping over. My shed will have star-gazing windows and a balcony. A hot plate for making tea and a little mouse-proof store for provisions. I imagine my shed will be a little like old Ratty’s house in Wind in the Willows, only with a loftier view. Occasionally I’ll get a visit from Mole and we’ll take a picnic down to the lawn. Nasturtium flowers will hang down from small wooden pots and I shall graze on the peppery leaves. СКАЧАТЬ