How to Disguise a Garden Shed — 5 Ideas to Stop Your Outdoor Storage From Dominating Your Space

Garden sheds are typically bland, identikit structures that offer very little in the way of style. Unless you've splashed out on a bespoke one, I can probably accurately describe yours right now — a small weathered hut of timber cladding and roofing felt that's likely looking a bit worse for wear. Well, I'm here to tell you that there's a better solution to annually staining your shed in a desperate (read: futile) attempt to give it a facelift, and it's hiding in plain sight (literally).

Unless you're branching out with a custom design, garden shed ideas don't generally turn heads. If you want to avoid disturbing your beautiful garden landscape with a wall of unsightly shed siding, disguising it is a maintenance-free way to achieve a seamless space where your outdoor storage doesn't dominate. It's a trick landscapers love to use for gardens that look more polished and put-together, and there are plenty of methods that you can do yourself (even if you don't have a green thumb).

Ready to put an end to unsightly garden storage? From concealing the structure with foliage to blending your shed in with your surrounding garden fencing, here are five inventive ways to disguise your garden shed that are easier than they look.

1. Train Climbing Plants Up a Trellis

In most cases, a garden shed is set against a backdrop of garden borders bursting with luscious foliage. If your wooden structure looks incongruous alongside the surrounding green, leafy shrubbery, concealing it with climbing plants allows your garden to "reclaim" your shed so that it blends in.

That's exactly what the team at Scott Lewis Landscape Architecture (SLLA) decided to do in this San Francisco garden pictured. "The structure was previously a run-down shed," says principal and founder Scott Lewis. "It was renovated and sided with a custom dark steel frame, which was eventually covered with ivy. This reuse gave the creative client family a detached art studio with space to make and store drawings and paintings. The 'green cube' studio now blends seamlessly with its verdant surroundings."

To recreate this landscaping idea, attach trellises to the surface of your shed and train climbing plants like ivy, clematis, or star jasmine to grow up them. The result is a living wall of foliage that turns your shed into a living, breathing structure (just be wary of using plants with robust clinging roots that could damage your shed's foundations).

2. Make it Sustainable With a "Green Roof"

When you gaze out of your bedroom window, do you admire a beautifully kept modern garden, or are you distracted by the peeling, sun-bleached shed roof strewn with long-lost kids' toys? The latter is, undeniably, an eyesore, but one that so many of us put up with. If the top of your shed is ruining your otherwise well-kept garden, consider creating a more verdant birds-eye-view with a green roof.

It's something the architects at Tulip Landscapes decided to introduce to the company's bulb shed. "We wanted to ensure that the roof was green and were excited by the opportunity to gain more planting space," explains landscape architect Henrietta Norman, founder and creative director of Tulip Landscapes. "We ensured that the depth of soil was just enough for shallow-rooted plants without being too heavy for the structure, and planted it with a mix of perennials and tough Mediterranean shrubs plus some bulbs and the odd recycled window box geranium for color."

Besides helping to soften the visual threshold between the shed and the neighboring hedgerow, the living roof is an eco-conscious planting idea that provides an additional source of nectar for insects and winter seeds for birds.

This GardenersDream mix of five outdoor fern plants available on Amazon would be a great place to start.

Henrietta Norman

After an initial career in television, Henrietta Norman retrained in horticulture, planting and design and finally Landscape Architecture at Birmingham University. Parallel years of volunteering under Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter in East Sussex engendered a love of plants and influenced and inspired the company’s signature intuitive planting combinations.

3. Use Mirrored Panels to Hide Your Shed in Plain Sight

Concealing your shed can be as easy as reflecting your garden's surrounding beauty back at you. The answer to that is, of course, mirrors. If your wooden shed stands out and seems a little too harsh, cladding it with a few reflective panels is a creative way to soften the landscape.

The beauty of this trick is that it works instantly (no need for patience or a green thumb — just a few power tools and some mirrored panels). Use gothic, window-style garden mirrors for a traditional look, or take inspiration from the space above and use rows of panels for a more modern edge.

This clever design comes courtesy of Sandra Duran Wilson, an abstract visual creator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who had been considering ways to disguise her garden shed for years. "I first painted it to match the adobe wall behind it, but I wanted something more interesting," she says. "I had some mirrored Plexiglas pieces leftover from a project, and it spurred the idea to cover the shed. It reflects both the garden and another installation."

4. Integrate Your Shed into Your Wall

Instead of relying on greenery or optical illusions to disguise your shed, you could consider blending it in with your garden's hardscape instead.

With a bit of thoughtful planning, you could also integrate your garden shed into your fencing or wall. In the modern front yard pictured above, the oxidized steel wall is home to a small bike shed. This genius hidden storage idea was brought to life by London-based company Bikebox Works and combines a planter above with compact storage below for the homeowners' bikes and tools.

"We find space where no one believed there was any and we are very proud of some of those projects that look the simplest but were actually the most complex to resolve," says the company's director, Tracey Bendrien. "We will always eye up a front garden wall because most are unworthy of protecting — they're not original features to the streetscape, poorly maintained, and taking up much valued space." As hinted at by Tracey, integrating your garden storage into a wall can be especially useful when space is already at a premium.

5. Blend Your Shed With Your Fence

If you plan on re-landscaping your entire garden, consider ways to assimilate your shed with its surroundings. If you have a fence made up of horizontal slatted panels, for example, choose the same panel design for your garden shed to blur the boundaries.

That's exactly what Prentis Hale, a principal at SHED Architecture and Design, decided to do in the garden of the Seattle home pictured above. "In its previous state, the backyard was dilapidated and unpleasant to occupy," says Prentis. "The east/north property line is now defined by a fence made from steel tube and Ipe, and culminates in a garden/storage shed made of the same material. Together, the fences, storage shed, and concrete retaining wall give shape to the yard and create one usable space that visually connects to the house."

The shed's blueprint is S-shaped in plan and contains space for a bike and kayak storage area that faces the street, as well as a potting shed that faces the garden pool. "Large sliding doors open and close these functional spaces, and a green rooftop can be viewed from the upper-story windows," says Prentis. It makes for a sleek garden storage idea that coalesces with the perimeter fence for a visually streamlined space.

FAQs

How Do I Make a Garden Shed Look Pretty?

No one wants their garden storage to become an eyesore. The easiest way to make your garden shed look pretty is by painting or staining it regularly and keeping up with general maintenance.

To successfully disguise it, "rewilding" your shed with climbing plants and flowers is a particularly striking landscape idea, or you can create a living roof by adding a waterproof membrane followed by a growing medium and your chosen plants.

One of the worst garden shed mistakes you can make is allowing it to visually dominate your garden design. To soften your landscape and make your structure blend seamlessly into your outdoor space, borrow one of these inventive ways to disguise your shed. You'll still have practical garden storage but with a more subtle, harmonious aesthetic that allows your surrounding landscape design to really sing.