It’s the Love Shack. The long awaited quintessential garden house at Helen’s Haven now has a roof. The Love Shack is the completion of my garden design, my garden desires, my garden dreams. No longer a mere garden house, though, but a Love Shack. How could it be anything less?
Nice on it’s own, this framed structure was installed last fall. My hope was to put a roof on it but nothing else–no walls–glass or otherwise. It was never intended to be a greenhouse. I wouldn’t have minded a place to winter over plants, but I didn’t want this space to do that. I wanted the garden house to be a place of contemplation…for great thinking about garden philosophy. To think properly, I needed a roof.
The only person I wanted to do this was David Spain and his team at Moss and Stone Gardens. Only David could have interpreted my vision into a design that looked like the structure has been there for decades, with a faux finish to resembled rusted tin…Your what? Tin roof, rusted!
The Love Shack wasn’t the theme we were going for. It wasn’t even on the radar. But it is clearly the result of the design. Being a crazy B52s fan made me leap into a song the moment I saw the tin panels that would become my roof.
The sky exposed side is the color of rusted tin. The view from the inside is like a cherry on top of the design, but with paprika. Paprika is my color. A color that speaks to me like no other. We were even able to keep the twinkle lights. It’s a Love Shack, baby.
My first love rendezvous was on Mother’s Day. Appropriately so, my three kids, ages 11 – 15, planned dinner by cooking hot dogs on an open fire we are so often making. We had s’mores for desert. As if on cue, it began to rain, and we all gathered in the Love Shack. We giggled, and laughed out loud as we sang, The Love Shack is a little old place where we can get together.
Love Shack baby, Love Shack bay-bee.
The whole shack shimmies! The whole shack shimmies when everybody’s
Movin’ around and around and around!
Everybody’s movin’, everybody’s groovin’ baby!
Folks linin’ up outside just to get down
Everybody’s movin’, everybody’s groovin’ baby
Funky little shack! Funky little shack!
The place was designed for me to sit in the garden in complete view of my kids playing in the soccer field. When the field is no longer needed, the space may morph into something else; but for now, I’m not looking that far into the future. I don’t want too. I want to be here and now with my little ones eating dogs on a stick, sitting around the fire in front of the Love Shack. And if we should begin to sing, all the better.
Helen Yoest is a writer and speaker through her business Gardening with Confidence ®.
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Helen’s book, Gardening with Confidence–50 ways to add style for personal creativity is due out this fall.
The book launch will held at the JC Raulston Arboretum, Thursday, November 1, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
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