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7 Favorite Garden Cottages & Sheds

Creative ideas for backyard retreats, detached home offices, and reinvented sheds

Sunset
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Garden cottage greenhouse

Owner Connie Featherston overwinters her orchids and raises heirloom vegetable seedlings in this 8- x 10-foot garden shed in Exeter, California.

“I had to put a clock in there because I have so much fun, I literally lose track of time,” she says.

A 'Cecile Brunner' climbing rose arches over the garden shed entry. The shed features a recycled door and windows that let in plenty of light.

See what makes this greenhouse work

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Under-eaves storage shed

Attached to the outside of the house, this 15 ½-inch deep structure opens to reveal a spacious storage area to keep your garden tools dry and out of site.

Materials, instructions, and building diagram

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Flexible modern prefab

Need a little more room? We partnered with San Francisco-based prefab firm Modern Cabana to create a pared-down modular project that provides a bit more square footage without the need for an over-the-top home addition.

The resulting guest suite and home office function separately as highly flexible bonus rooms. And combined with the outdoor entertaining areas, they offer a compelling model of minimalist living.

Tour our cottage project

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Summer Retreat Home

Sunset's 2007 Celebration Weekend featured a vacation getaway created with tent cabins from Sweetwater Bungalows.

Create your own combination of tents, or put just one in your backyard for an instant outdoor getaway.

See what we did

5 /6 Jim Henkens

Backyard artist's studio

Looking for a space that would foster her creativity, Seattle artist Kristie Severn decided to build it in her own backyard. Local architects Jim Graham and added a modern, airy art studio onto an existing shed in her yard. Then she hired friend and landscape designer Brandon Peterson to plant a garden full of meadowlike grasses. “It’s a perfect place to relax with friends—or a sketchbook,” Severn says.

More: How to create a backyard artist's studio

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Shed revival

Evan Sagerman and Marci Riseman needed extra space for a guest room and entertaining area, and they found it in an unlikely place: a tiny, ramshackle shed in the backyard of their San Francisco Victorian home.

The project became an exercise in preservation and space planning.

See the before and after