{ou ter sa nc tum} “


term. It also denotes a loved space,” says Christopher Buckley of his shed.


I was within the comforting orbit of the family home but isolated from the distraction of other people’s lives. I was able to write the book, even if it would forever lack one essential element: a publisher. The point, though, is that the shed, makeshift and musty, became an incubator for creativity. Rooms have their own spirit, and in sensi-


tive souls, that essence can be felt deeply. Garden sheds seem to have a special resonance, when you think about their role in the lives of various art- ists. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote some of her best poems in a bare-bones shack in the woods. Dylan Thomas had his “wordsplashed hut” on a Welsh cliff, where he wrote “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” George Bernard Shaw, ever the eccentric, had a writing shed that could be swiveled to follow the English sun. Then there was Mark Twain, who found his muses in a vine- clad garden pavilion, his “cozy nest.” In Northwest Washington, the novelist and


journalist Christopher Buckley works in a writ- ing shed converted from a one-car garage that is just big enough, he figures, to accommodate a Model T Ford. His father, William F. Buckley Jr., “was fond of a Spanish word, querencia,” he said. “It’s a bullfighting term, the part of the ring where the bull feels safe. It also denotes a loved space. So, it’s my querencia.” Perched in a corner of his garden, at the end


of a lane, the shed was rundown when Buckley came to it in the early 1990s. He renovated it after giving up his home office to his growing family. He had the floor tiled, basic heating and air conditioning installed, and a porthole win- dow added. Nowadays, he could return to the house, but the shed offers that vital psychologi- cal separation. It is quiet and breezy. Jake, the Labrador, lies across the threshold while the writer teases words from the keyboard. A desk fountain adds soothing white noise. Of course, you don’t have to be a writer to


realize the value of creating a familiar, quiet place of one’s own. Woodworkers, gardeners and other hobby tinkerers have known the


18 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | september 19, 2010


value of the shed for generations. That same cossetting quality turns the shed


into a sanctuary for anyone willing to think out- side the box but very much inside the shed. In his book “Men and Sheds,” Gordon Thorburn shows us the transforming powers of the simple larch hut: a stargazer in his observatory, a bishop in his chapel, a fellow who displays 4,000 milk bot- tles. Or take Gareth Jones’s “Shed Men,” where the reader is introduced to Brian, whose mock Tudor shed is a loft for racing pigeons. These men and their sheds are in Britain,


where ordinary blokes lead lives defined by pe- culiar interests. Case in point: a shed pub called The Gardener’s Arms, where three guys named Dink, Robbo and Prem gather amid the seed trays and potting benches to enjoy the pub ex- perience. Bans on smoking in actual pubs have driven a number of smokers to their own bars at the bottom of the garden. From the outside, The Gardener’s Arms is nothing more than a wood- en box with too many windows and not enough paint. Inside, it’s a place where Dink, Robbo and Prem quaff home brew, put flame to their Nico- tiana tabacum and discuss the relative merits of carrot varieties. It seems reasonable to suggest that sheds


developed their dual role as utility space and hermitage at a time when houses were small- er, families were bigger, and the shed occupant found a refuge that was cheap and available. Why then, in an age of small families rattling around in big houses, are sheds still so alluring? In the United Kingdom, at least, aficionados have even entered the language, as “sheddies.” “It’s going a bit mad,” said Andrew Wilcox,


a 38-year-old Web developer and, avocation- ally, the UK’s Sheddie Supremo. He rattles off the defining attributes of his own shed in South Wales. “Chair, electricity, radio, dog.” Wilcox (nom de hut, Uncle Wilco), who


is the brains behind the Web site We Heart Sheds, launched National Shed Week and began a competition, Shed of the Year, that in its second round went global.


Querencia. It’s a bullfighting


Above and on previous pages: architect Chuck Witmer of silver spring built a structure out of recycled materials that was named the international shed of the Year for 2009. he uses the interior of the shed to build furniture — “i’m in here three nights a week,” he said. his wife, Jessica, uses it as a painter’s studio.


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