The Charming Nook

It has been some time since I have been able to write on my blog since May, as I have been busy working on a big project in the garden over the last few weekends.

Thankfully, the Mr and I finally completed it last weekend!

This is a 6×6 polycarbonate metal greenhouse which has integrated gutters for water collection. I purchased it from here: Outsunny Polycarbonate Walk-In Aluminium Garden Greenhouse (therange.co.uk)

I had originally planned on placing this greenhouse at the top of the garden, where I wanted to create a fruit and vegetable growing area. I purchased this greenhouse back in January and then a few months ago, the Mr and I tested out how the base fitted into the proposed site at the top of the garden. I soon realised that the location wouldn’t be suitable for various reasons. I then spent months thinking about where else would be suitable for it and I settled on another concrete pad in the garden:

The pad had been used previously for storing two large builder’s sacks filled with sod that had been dug up when I removed all the grass from the front of the property. I had left the sod to decompose and it has been used for growing potatoes in large containers last year:

I will also be reusing the soil for filling up raised garden beds in the future…

The sacks were also duel-purpose and served as a cat bed for our neighbour’s cat:

On one of the last weekends, the Mr and I managed to drag the sacks off the pad into another area of the garden:

We then had to build a wooden base for attaching the greenhouse to. Originally, I was going to be able to just set the metal based corners into the ground, but the larger concrete base pictured made that impossible. The wooden base was bolted securely into the concrete base and then the greenhouse base was fixed to the wooden base:

The Mr and I fashioned the above metal brackets from some metal strapping we used for fixing the archways to the wall in The Wild Borders.

Out of all the stages of this project, building and fixing the base to the ground was the part that took the most time and was the most challenging.

I have been using our front bay window in our bedroom for growing seeds, and various windowsils in the house have also been taken up with cuttings and seedlings over the last few months.

Having the new greenhouse as a proper growing space has been so welcomed to have a dedicated space and I have been able to move all the plants there now. I have also been able to have somewhere in the garden to shelter from the rain and do some potting on of plants. I will write another post soon to share what I have been growing this year.

I still need to finish off sealing the greenhouse with silicone sealant and also fixing the polycarbonate panels to the metal frame, but it is surprisingly sturdy. We also have some wood set aside for boxing out the bottom of the base. I will also need to figure out what to use for collecting water from the greenhouse roof. Depending on whether it is necessary, we might also reinforce the right hand-side, as the winds blasts from that direction at certain parts of the year.

I hope you enjoyed reading today’s blog post. I’m delighted to have finished this project. It was a challenging and exhausting project at times, but it was worth it. There are still many more projects to come! Happy gardening 🙂