Looking For YOUR Quality Letchworth Shed. Take A Look Here!

Alan Titchmarsh is famous for being a presenter on BBC’s Gardeners World from 1996 until 2002 where his love for all things in the garden was apparent. During this time the show was presented from his own garden in Hampshire. Among the beautiful gardens, plants and shrubbery he conveyed what a wonderful pastime this was. We could all go to our garden sheds and get our garden tools out and be creative, weeding the borders and encouraging gorgeous flowers to grow. The popularity of his show was a success for all the garden centres and nurseries around the country where they could see sales growing to meet the demands of these newly inspired gardeners. From my point of view being in the garden shed business, situated not far from Letchworth, this was also good news as old sheds were seen as being passed their best or not large enough and many people flocked to buy the latest new one to meet their new needs.

Alan went from Gardeners World to the very successful Ground Force program along with Charlie Dimmock, who became famous for more than just being an enthusiast, and Tommy Walsh. They went around renovating gardens in secret and surprising one of the house owners. They took a shabby old garden with maybe a manky old rickety shed and tired old lawn and converted it into a dazzling show garden with the shed either replaced or well hidden so not to ruin the general design of the garden. It was at this time that their love for timber decking, although I don’t think Alan was a great fan of it, took off and again the garden centres and timber yard around the country said thank you very much.

In 2009 Alan was approached about coming back to Gardeners World when they re-launched the series as garden fans had been slating the show for losing its way a little. This is the trouble where you have a special charismatic presenter who leaves and the presenters following have some very big welly boots to fill. Some of the criticism were that the show had become a ‘bit trendy and had been ‘dumbed down’. Back to basics was the order of the day to get these gardeners back down into their sheds and start to enjoy their gardens again.

There were many problems in achieving their goal as Alan was involved in many other projects including the Alan Titchmarsh Show, How to Be a Gardener and The Natural History of Britain which I enjoyed immensely. He has also been proficient at writing gardening books, also two autobiographies and seven novels. Well loved, knowledgeable and a great inspiration to gardeners in print – is there no end to Alan’s talents?

Well ITV think so has they have taken the plunge to broadcast their first ever prime time gardening programme. He has signed a deal to present four more series of his highly popular chat show, broadcast in the afternoons. This new deal includes Alan working with ITV to promote his range of consumers products to his enthusiastic viewers. He said that this was a great opportunity and a role which he relished on taking on Whether these new programmes will give a boost to garden centres in Letchworth and the shed business remains to be seen but if his past success is anything to go by I may find myself back down the shed factory with my nail gun making more garden sheds to meet this possible demand.

There has been many business started in garden sheds from small craft shops, to tea rooms, to home repair centres and small shops. Each have found these buildings to be a cost effective way of starting a business in the garden and the fact that a garden shed can be made to a size to suit their needs is also a factor. Research has shown 60% of people starting a business do this from home so the demand for the slightly larger ones is growing. The key advantage of starting a business at home is it’s not as risky as renting premises as many people already have a garden shed anyway in Letchworth. Probably there will be a need to clear a lot of junk out of the shed so you can start or you could invest in an extra shed specifically for the business. The advantage with that is it can easily be defined as a business expense so that you can reclaim the cost of these sheds against tax.

If you have registered your business for vat then the vat on the shed can be reclaimed, which can amount to a significant amount. However, you need to bear in mind, even though you will receive the vat back on the outlay you will have to charge vat on your sales and services and can make you uncompetitive.

As a rule small businesses using sheds tend to be one-man-bands (one-person-band?) and any large organisation would not normally use a garden shed. However, up in Scotland, a Scottish lady (surprisingly!) Has run her post office from her shed since 1983 and has no plans to retire. Esther Brauer, has served the remote community of Kylesko in the Scottish Highlands for 56 years using her shed, which must mean she did not buy one of the cheap and nasty sheds available on the Internet at the moment.

Prior to this, and for over 10 years, she used to deliver the post over an 18 mile area until the age of 60. When she learnt how to use a computer she gave up delivering the mail and became a postmistress in her shed. A true ‘silver surfer’. Mrs Braur said she will continue as long as possible as her small rural community, a little like Letchworth, needs a post office, even if it is in a garden shed. She did manage to escape the closure which was a great relief and she can’t imagine anyone else taking on this job in a shed. She further said the service she provides is a lifeline for her community and is highly valued by visitors as the nearest post office is 10 miles away.

Another garden shed was used in Scotland and in it was developed the STAG filter unit which is a lifesaving water filtering device. Jim Rae, of Jerviston, used his shed to invent this after 6 years in Africa seeing people dying from polluted water.

The smallest post office in America is a minuscule garden shed size of 5ft x 5ft. This shed is situated on Highway 41 between Miami and Naples near the town of Letchworth. This shed is fully equipped with air conditioning but this take up the entire rear wall of the shed. Due to its location it’s unlikely there will be much waiting so if you are in this part of the world why not stop and take a look at this garden shed playing an important role in the US’s postal service.