Chapter 4 Design

Before any building could commence I needed to develop plans. Combining my prior research of garden designs and taking into account my requirements, I started with a few rough drawings. The shape I'd decided on for the main structure was a six-sided hexagon. The hexagon was carved this into six equal pieces, like cutting a cake. Mmmm, cake...

I will refer to these six pieces as bays from now on. As you can see the six bays are triangles with equal sides at 60 degree angles. I then drew a small hexagon shape within the large hexagon. This meant there was still the six bays plus one central area.

The small central hexagon (below) was designed to be a sitting area, free of plants. Each of its six sides was about one metre wide, to fit a door. So if I stood in the central point, I could spin around and see six doorways into the six bays. Does that make sense?

Each bay still looked like a piece of cake but with the end bitten off.  There was a small doorway, two side walls and the external wall. The photo below shows the outer hexagon, the central hexagon, the doorways and the internal side walls.

You can see the central hexagon's roof was designed as a taller, aesthetically pleasing spire. This spire was permanently covered in thick shadecloth, so I could rest underneath to get away from the sun or light rain showers. It was the perfect place to sit and have a cup of tea or coffee while looking over the garden and watching the blue wrens hop about.

As well as the main hexagonal structure, two gates had to be built. One permanent to access the structure and one to lock the chooks in a bay. This chook gate was designed to be moved with the chooks. Using special hinges, two fixed to the gate and two on the right side of each post within the small hexagon, the gate could be lifted on and off hinges and repositioned at any bay as required. The photo below shows the permanently fixed external gate. The movable chook gate looked the same.

The final piece of construction required was a separate nesting box for the chooks. This box, though large, was also able to be picked up and moved with the chooks. I'll show you photos of that in the coming chapter on chooks. Speaking of chapters, the next one is about materials I used and the size of walls and posts etc. So stay tuned for more information (or subscribe if you haven't already).