For the first two years of my cottage garden, potting up meant kneeling on a folded towel in the greenhouse doorway, compost bag propped against my knee, trying not to tip the whole lot over the threshold. It worked, in the sense that plants got potted. It also meant my knees, my back and my patience all gave out roughly at the same time every spring.
A potting bench fixed all three problems in one afternoon, and it’s a far simpler build than it looks. If your tool shed has even a metre of spare wall, you can have proper working height, somewhere for the compost bag to sit upright, and a place to actually put your tools down instead of losing them in the border. Here’s how I built mine.
Decide on height before anything else. Standard worktop height (90–92cm) works for most people, but the real measure is your own elbow height when your arm hangs relaxed — that’s where a trowel should sit without you stooping. I’m on the shorter side, so mine sits at 88cm, and it’s made a genuine difference to how long I can pot without my back complaining.
Keep the frame simple. You don’t need joinery skills for this. A basic bench is four legs, a rail around the top for rigidity, and a worktop — I used reclaimed scaffold boards, which are cheap, tough, and already weathered enough to not mind compost and water. Screw rather than nail; you’ll want to tighten things after the first season of use.
Build in a lip. This is the detail that makes the biggest practical difference and the one most guides skip. A raised edge of about 5cm around three sides of the worktop stops compost, gravel and spilled water going everywhere the moment you start working. The front stays open so you can sweep debris straight off onto a sheet or into a bucket.
Add storage underneath, not just on top. The space below the worktop is where an open shelf earns its keep — deep enough for a stack of pots or a full bag of compost standing upright, which saves you bending to the floor bag every single time. I added a shallow drawer above it for twine, labels and a pencil, the three things I otherwise lose constantly.
Think about where the light falls. If you’re placing the bench inside a tool shed rather than a greenhouse, position it under or facing the window if you have one — potting in your own shadow gets old fast. Mine sits at right angles to the shed’s single window, which gives good light without glare on wet compost.
Finish it properly. A couple of coats of exterior wood oil or a garden-safe varnish will see off most of the damage that comes from constant contact with wet compost and hose spray. It’s a ten-minute job that adds years to a bench’s working life.
The whole project took me one Saturday afternoon and cost less than a single flat-pack potting table from a garden centre — and because I built it to my own height and my own habits, it works far better than anything I could have bought off the shelf. If you’re stocking the rest of the shed to match, I’ve rounded up the greenhouses, growhouses and storage I actually use in my Amazon shop.
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