A timber pavilion with a sedum roof replacing a cold Victorian garden room.
Orchard Leigh is a prominent house on Rodborough Hill, just outside Stroud. When the clients invited me in, they had a Victorian garden room that didn't really work — too cold to use most of the year and visually disconnected from the rest of the house. They wanted a beautiful addition that would carry through the qualities of the existing home and step out into the garden in a way the old room never did.
Status
Completed 2022
Brief
Garden room replacement, retention of selected existing fabric, site oversight
Location
Rodborough Hill, Stroud
Materials
High-performing timber frame, cedar deck, sedum roof, high-spec glazing
The Story
Garden rooms don't have to be cold, and additions don't have to look bolted on.
The clients at Orchard Leigh had a beautiful house and a beloved garden, with a Victorian garden room sitting unhappily between them. It was cold to the point of being unusable for most of the year, and visually it didn't add up — neither old enough to feel original nor new enough to feel resolved. They came to us wanting something that did both jobs at once: a genuinely lovely room to sit in, and a generous opening from the house out into the garden they'd worked on for years.
A specific request shaped the design: the clients wanted to retain elements of the existing building, both for sentimental reasons and because they liked the way some of those moments connected to the older parts of the house. We worked those carefully into the new scheme, so the new addition reads as continuous with what was there, not a wholesale erasure.
The new structure is a high-performing timber frame — so the room is genuinely usable in winter, not just the warm months — with high-quality glazing on the garden-facing elevations. A sedum roof helps the addition sit gently in its setting and meets the practice's environmental standards. A covered cedar deck wraps out from the room into the garden, so the line between inside and outside is, in summer, hardly a line at all.
I oversaw the project from start to finish, attending regular site meetings as the build progressed. The result is the addition the clients hoped for: a room that doubles the time they spend in their own garden.
The pavilion in context with the original house on Rodborough Hill.
New timber structure in dialogue with the original stone — elements of the existing building retained at the clients' request.
Inside, looking out: the room frames the garden the clients spent years making.
A view through the new structure, glazing on the garden side.
The pavilion read as an extension of the original house, with greenery softening the threshold.
A high-performing timber frame, a sedum roof, and a covered cedar deck.
Sustainability isn't a separate conversation. It's just how we build now.