Inside a garden shed where time stands still…..

April 17th, 2016
Posted In: Garden style & living

There’s no doubt about it – de-cluttering your desk, home or garden shed can help you feel more in control.

But something is lost, too. A completely decluttered life has fewer layers and less history. It is, in some ways, less rich

De-cluttering the key to happiness? Not always…

Decluttering’ has almost become a religion today. Decluttering tips, books and programmes promise to change your life, make you more successful and a happier person.’Throw away everything that doesn’t make your life wonderful,’ is one de-cluttering tip. A friend of mine followed it and threw away all his books, including first editions belonging to his wife…there was not much ‘wonderful’ in his life immediately following…

Open the door to fifty years of gardening…

So I was very excited to photograph the interior of a garden ‘shed’ that has not been cleared out for around 50 years.

Framed by falling blossom, this tool shed lies largely untouched.

Its owner died ten years ago and the new owners have the left the contents largely undisturbed – even though the ‘garden shed’ is actually a sizeable stables and they need more space.

An old chemist’s cabinet was used for storing seeds – probably since the late 1940s.

In the past, people often left the contents of their lofts, attics and sheds. When they sold their houses, they simply walked away from anything they couldn’t be bothered to take. My parents found two 1915 signed photos of King George and Queen Mary in the attic of the house we grew up in. To me, it has always seemed magical to hold something that had been signed by the ruling monarch in the year that saw the first Zeppelin raids on London, the battle of Ypres and the retreat from Gallipoli.

The old stable stalls are still there (the wooden wall on the right), along with the brick floor and garden equipment dating back to the 1950s and 60s

Now clearing your house is a legal requirement. However, in this case, the buyers had agreed to take anything the sellers didn’t want. As it was a probate sale, the sellers simply left the attics and stable block as it had been. More than five years on, the stable block is still virtually untouched.

A mix of pots, probably accumulated since Victorian days, with today’s plastic pots amongst them.

There are little glimpses into horticultural life fifty years ago. There are old certificates hanging on the wall, won in the late 1960s. The entry asks for the owner’s name, and adds ‘name of gardener (if appropriate).’

First, second and third prize certificates for garden shows in the 1960s still hang on the walls

I don’t know enough about gardening clubs to know if this is still on the form or whether it harks back to a time when even people with middle-sized gardens might expect to have a full-time gardener. (This ‘garden shed’ serves a one-acre walled garden).

Is this for lawn fertiliser or to collect grass on the front of a 1950s lawn-mower?

I like the sunlight on the permanently-open cupboard and the beautiful beamed ceiling

Closer up on the cupboard

Some gardening is still done from this building, but the older vintage tools still hang where they have probably belonged since the late 1940s.

Rusty saws and spider’s webs…

Seed drawer…

First prize for any other fruit not mentioned…

Sticks to support plants are kept in bundles and hung from the roof – quite a useful storage tip!

The previous owner gardened here (with his full-time gardener) from the late 1940s until his late eighties. His gardening coat still hangs up on the side of a cupboard.

Nothing can stay the same forever. One day this garden shed will be cleared. But however sympathetically it is converted to 21st century use, it will be difficult to keep all its sense of history: the cobbled floors, the old stalls and the twentieth century garden tools and memorabilia. So I think it’s magical that there hasn’t been any automatic ‘de-cluttering’.

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