My Basement Garden Shop – Works for Me!
When we first chose this house as our new home purchase, I thought my garden shop would be the little shed out back. It is such a cute shed with a matching color to the house trim. It had a small overhanging porch, a window, and it was larger than my previous shed had been. I really liked it! and I looked forward to using it when we moved in. Well, as soon as I could start using it, since we were moving in to the new house mid-March.
But my plans didn’t work out and that shed ended up being a place for the mowers, shredders, weed whips, a quad-runner…basically all the Guy’s Toys and tools. The garage isn’t enough supposedly. But as it all turned out, I don’t think the shed would have worked as well as I had previously thought. It is sitting back into the yard, and it would be a ways to haul the tools, work the beds, and then haul them back.
You see, all my beds here at the house are in borders against the house and deck. All my containers are in those borders, on the deck, and sitting in the front area garden. So it worked for me to set up my garden shop in the basement. Thankfully, it is a walk-out basement so that the garden shop is accessible from the outside. It opens onto the deck.
Setting Up the Garden Shop
Carrying all the garden equipment, tools, hypertufa molds, cement supplies, bags of vermiculite and peat moss…Wow, what a job that was! I could not believe how much I had accumulated and I did edit a lot and got rid of it. I took some to the Goodwill, some I just recycled (a lot of my plastic molds.) When I went in to assess everything to move, I realized I had so many molds that were almost the same size, so they weren’t necessary. I have kept all the larger sized hypertufa molds since I love making the BIG ones. Now those are all shelved and easily accessed in the new arrangement downstairs.
I am including a video so that you can see all of the area I have now and set my set up. I bought some shelving units from Rural King for $25 each. I should be able to set up everything in full view so that I don’t have to hunt for anything. I am slowly getting things arranged like I want them…until I think of a better way. Constantly changing it up is keeping me from getting it done. But I have been able to do a lot of potting and painting and all those spring chores needed.
Those little wagons come in handy. We had two small ones and it is easy to load my garden supplies and even plants in them and just cruise around the yard to put things where they are needed. And when I purchase something new, I can load it in a wagon right in the garage and pull it around. The hill at the side is great exercise and a big challenge. I know I complain all the time about needing exercise but I guess more gardening on the hill will work for me!
For my wall decor in the garden shop, I have purchased the letters to spell out “Kim’s Gardens” and I plan to purchase letters to spell out The Hypertufa Gardener on the other wall. Then I guess I can film videos under my name. Won’t that be nice!
I am concerned about the Portland cement in the basement, but I have a dehumidifier for this section and plan to run it down here. ( We have another one in the finished side too.) In the video, I show you the small 10 gallon trash can that I will put my cement inside of, probably with a plastic liner too. I don’t think the 10 gallon will hold the whole bag, so I am getting another 10 gallon size too. A large 20-30 gallon size would be too deep to make it easy to scoop out, don’t you think?
I will put the cement on the little rolling trolley cart I have. This all works for me. What do you think?