The fascinating world of garden office owners

Garden Office Week – Smart Garden Offices’ blogger enters new territory

In today’s sponsored post, Smart Garden Offices’ new blogger shares her discoveries about the extraordinary people working from home in a garden office:

You couldn’t make it up. Here I am writing a blog post about a blog that I created whilst blogging for a client. You could say that My Garden Office is the social media equivalent of tourists taking photos of tourist photographers.

When I started doing some consultancy work for Charlie Dalton of Smart Garden Offices, I had no idea that there was such a diverse community of people working at home in a garden office.

In fact, I thought “home working” meant the laptop-at-kitchen-table scenario (yup, been there), or taking over the conservatory or the spare bedroom (which several of Charlie’s customers told me they had put up with until they found him and “reclaimed” their homes).

To help me get my head around this business, Charlie hooked me up with some of his customers. I asked them how they used their garden office and what bespoke features they’d ordered.

These chats surprised me enormously, not only in terms of how helpful they were for my own induction, but also how interesting were the stories of people’s everyday daily lives and what made them choose a Smart Garden Office over any other products.

It’s clear that Mr Dalton and his team impressed with their personalised approach to customer service (“I wanted bespoke. I really felt like there was a bit of humanity in that office. They were listening to me”, one customer said).

I’ve got quite a visual way of navigating the world, so when I was being a bit thick and couldn’t understand the way they said they’d used their space, I’d say, “Send me a photo”. And then I’d see exactly why they liked all the bespoke features that enabled them to place that socket just there, why the porthole window worked so well for them in that spot, why they really needed that extra library shelving and so on.

While they chatted with me from their cosy garden offices, the common feeling I was hearing about was one of “retreat”, of a peaceful and quiet place to think, a space where they could focus properly on their work or their hobby. “Me time” was mentioned quite a bit.

Several of them shared stories of how they got started doing what they do now, and why they needed or wanted to work from home. I loved hearing how some of them had pursued their creative or business dreams as a direct result of installing their garden office.

I also enjoyed some very funny moments of inadvertent miscommunication, such as the yoga instructor who “was finding it difficult to keep practising her business from her kitchen table”. Now that would be a bit uncomfortable after a while, no?

I suppose it was inevitable. Before long I started to covet my own Smart Garden Office. Oh, Suffolk Barn with verandah like in the TV show “The Waltons”, one day you shall be mine. There’s one in the photo above. Pretty enviable, isn’t it?

You can read all about it at www.mygardenoffice.co.uk, as well as the stories behind this unique community of Smart Garden Offices customers.

Enjoyed this? Check out more expert Garden Office Week advice on getting the best from the garden office.