Category: Greenhouses & Tool Sheds

— warm glass, tomato leaves gone slightly tired, the last of the basil holding on. I always know it’s time to start closing things up for winter when I catch myself reaching for a jumper before I’ve even opened the greenhouse door in the morning. This week felt like that moment.

Getting a greenhouse ready for winter isn’t complicated, but it does reward a bit of unhurried attention now, while the weather is still mild enough to actually enjoy being out there. Leave it too late and you’re doing all of this in the cold, with frost-tender plants already suffering. Here’s the checklist I work through every year, roughly in order.

1. Give the glass (or polycarbonate) a proper clean. Grime and algae on the panels block a surprising amount of light right when your plants need every bit of it. A soft brush, warm water and a little diluted washing-up liquid does the job — rinse well so nothing streaks. Clean glass also means less shadow for pests and fungal spores to hide in over winter.
2. Sort the ventilation before you insulate. It sounds backwards to think about airflow just as the weather turns, but stagnant, damp air is what causes grey mould and blackleg over winter, not the cold itself. Check that vents and louvres still open and close smoothly, and clear out any leaves or debris that have gathered in the tracks over summer.
3. Bubble-wrap insulation, done properly. Horticultural bubble wrap (the large-bubble kind, not the packaging stuff) pinned or clipped to the frame keeps several degrees of warmth in on a cold night. I leave a gap around vents so I can still get airflow through on milder days — fully sealing a greenhouse for months does more harm than good.
4. Bring in what actually needs to come in. Not everything does. Hardy perennials in pots are usually fine outside with a mulch. But pelargoniums, fuchsias, tender salvias and anything semi-tropical you’ve been enjoying on the patio need to be under cover before the first proper frost, which in most of the UK and much of central Europe is only a few weeks away now.
5. Give your tools and staging a proper tidy before you lose the light for it. A greenhouse that’s organised in September is a much nicer place to duck into on a grey February afternoon than one you abandoned mid-task in October. Wipe down staging, sharpen and oil secateurs before they go into storage, and clear out anything that’s finished for the year.
6. Think about frost protection for the greenhouse itself, not just what’s inside it. A small heater or even just a max-min thermometer so you know how cold it’s actually getting overnight makes a real difference in deciding what needs extra protection. I’ve rounded up the greenhouses, growhouses and tool storage I’d actually recommend, sorted by size and budget, on the English Cottage Living Greenhouses & Tool Sheds page.
7. Do one last pest check before you close up for the season. Vine weevils, aphids overwintering in leaf litter, slugs tucked under pots — fifteen minutes now saves a much bigger headache in spring. Tip out and check any pots you’re bringing indoors before they cross the threshold.

None of this takes more than an afternoon, spread over a weekend if you’d rather. What I’ve learned over a few winters of getting this right (and a few of getting it badly wrong) is that a greenhouse put to bed properly in September comes back to life so much more easily in March. It’s one of those small, unglamorous jobs that makes the whole gardening year run more smoothly.

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Every September I have the same conversation with myself over the last tray of seedlings on the potting bench — a few sweet peas that germinated late, some hardy annual plugs I sowed on a whim, lettuce that’s nowhere near ready for the open border. Without some kind of shelter, most of them won’t see October. That’s where a cold frame earns its keep, and it’s quietly become the most useful thing I added to my garden last autumn.

What a Cold Frame Actually Does

A cold frame is really just a box with a lid made of glass or clear plastic — no heating, no electricity, nothing clever. What it does is trap the sun’s warmth during the day and slow the loss of that warmth overnight, so the air and soil inside stay several degrees ahead of whatever’s happening outside the box. That gap sounds modest, but a few degrees is often the entire difference between a seedling that limps through to spring and one that doesn’t make it past the first proper frost. It’s the low-effort, low-cost cousin of a greenhouse, and for a lot of cottage garden jobs, it’s actually the better tool for the job.

What to Grow in One Through Autumn

Right now, mine is doing three jobs at once. Young seedlings that are too tender for the open border but have outgrown their windowsill get hardened off gradually with the lid propped open a little more each week. Autumn-sown sweet peas and hardy annuals overwinter here rather than in an unheated greenhouse, since a cold frame sits low and holds warmth from the surrounding soil in a way a taller structure doesn’t. And salad leaves — rocket, mizuna, winter lettuce — will keep cropping through a cold frame well into November, weeks after anything in the open ground has given up.

Siting It Properly

A cold frame wants the sunniest, most sheltered spot you can give it — ideally against a south-facing wall, which returns stored warmth from the brickwork overnight and blocks the worst of the wind. Level ground matters more than people expect, since a frame that sits unevenly lets rain pool against the lower edge of the lid and find its way in. If you can position it near the greenhouse or potting bench, you’ll actually use it, since the plants that need daily attention are the ones that get neglected when the frame is tucked round the back of the shed.

Venting Is the Job Most People Skip

The single biggest mistake with a cold frame isn’t the frame itself, it’s forgetting to open it. On any bright day, even a cold one, the air inside can climb to greenhouse temperatures within an hour, and plants left to cook in a sealed box get soft, leggy growth that then can’t cope with the cold at all. Prop the lid open a few centimetres on mild mornings and close it again as the light fades — an inexpensive automatic vent opener, which lifts the lid on a temperature-sensitive rod with no power needed, is worth every penny if you’re often out during the day.

Buying vs Building

A simple timber-framed cold frame with a polycarbonate lid is the easiest starting point if you’d rather not build one — look for a lid that lifts fully off or props open at more than one height, since a fixed narrow gap won’t do much on a genuinely warm day. If you’re handy, an old window frame propped over a low brick or timber surround does exactly the same job for very little money, and it’s how most cottage gardeners built their first one. Either way, it’s one of the cheapest structures in the garden relative to how much use it gets between now and April.

By the time the first hard frost silvers the lawn, everything tender that would otherwise be gambling on an open border is tucked into its box, quietly getting on with things a few degrees warmer than it has any right to expect. It’s not glamorous, but a cold frame does more work per square foot than almost anything else you’ll put in a cottage garden.

Looking to add one to your own garden? A few sturdy cold frames and cloches I’d genuinely recommend are gathered on the Greenhouses & Tool Sheds shelf of the English Cottage Living shop.

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There’s a certain kind of gardener who spends all summer devoted to secateurs and spade, and then abandons them the moment the flowers stop — left muddy in a bucket by the back door until spring, when they turn up stiff, spotted with rust, and reluctant to cut anything at all. It doesn’t have to be that way. An hour spent now, before the tools go into hibernation for winter, is the difference between reaching for a blade that’s ready to work in March and reaching for one you have to fight with first.

Cleaning: Get the Season’s Growth Off First

A season of sap, soil and plant debris builds up on blades and handles in ways that are easy to ignore until it’s caked on. Start with a stiff brush to knock off dried mud and plant matter, then wipe blades down with a rag dampened in warm soapy water to shift the sappy residue that plain water won’t touch — sap left to sit is what causes blades to stick and pull rather than cut cleanly. For anything with real grime worked into the joints, like shears or loppers, an old toothbrush gets into the hinge where a cloth can’t reach. Dry everything thoroughly before moving on; damp tools left to “dry naturally” overnight are exactly how rust gets started.

Sharpening: The Step That Actually Saves Your Plants

A blunt blade doesn’t just make pruning harder work — it crushes stems instead of cutting them cleanly, tearing plant tissue in a way that heals slowly and lets disease in. Run a sharpening stone or a honing tool along the bevelled edge of secateurs and shears, always in the same direction the edge was originally ground, and you’ll feel the difference in a couple of strokes. Spades and hoes benefit from the same idea with a metal file — a sharp spade edge slices through soil and roots rather than being shoved through them, which matters a great deal by the twentieth hole you’re digging. You don’t need to chase a razor edge; a blade that can cleanly slice a sheet of paper is sharp enough for anything in the garden.

Oiling: The One-Minute Job That Prevents Rust

Once everything is clean, dry and sharp, wipe metal blades with a cloth lightly dampened with a general-purpose oil — a light machine oil or a specialist tool oil both work well, and even a rag that’s had a few drops of vegetable oil on it will do in a pinch. This leaves a thin barrier that keeps moisture off the metal all winter, which is the entire secret to a rust-free spring. Don’t forget wooden handles: a little linseed oil rubbed into a spade or fork handle keeps the wood from drying out and splitting over a cold winter in the shed, the same way it always has for gardeners who expect their tools to outlast them.

Storing: Give Them Somewhere Dry to Wait Out Winter

All that cleaning and oiling is undone quickly if the tools then sit on damp concrete or a wet shed floor all winter. Hang secateurs and shears on hooks rather than leaving them in a heap in a bucket, so air can get to every surface and nothing sits against another damp blade. Spades, forks and hoes are happiest stood upright in a dry corner or slotted into a simple rack, off the floor. If your shed tends towards damp, a small silica gel sachet or a scoop of sand in a bucket for smaller tools to sit in will pull moisture away from the metal all winter long.

It’s not a glamorous hour, and there’s no flower to show for it at the end — just a row of tools hung up clean, sharp and ready. But it’s the sort of quiet, unphotographed work that every good cottage garden is actually built on, and the version of you standing in the shed next March, reaching for a secateur that opens and cuts on the first try, will be grateful you did it.

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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