Across the nation, in back gardens and allotments, excitement is in the spring air, for now is the time to enter the Shed of the Year 2009. Your shed need not be expensive, but it has to show ingenuity, eccentricity or cack-handed exuberance to win, if previous competition entries are typical. We shed-lovers — the technical term is “sheddies” — are fascinated by the art and science of hut erection. We can easily spend a couple of hours ogling readers’ sheds online. The Shed of the Year competition is our Cup Final, our Olympics, our Miss World competition.

This report comes to you by laptop from my humble shed in Cricklewood, North London. It’s painted allotment-regulation green, and has a red velvet baroque chair which I found in a skip, and metal shelves which cost a fiver when Woolworths closed. At £99 from Homebase, and 3ft wide, it is the smallest shed on the allotments and was built by drunks on a dim winter afternoon three years ago. It goes without saying that my shed, like all much-loved sheds, is an escape hatch to a different world.

Unlike my life, my shed is simple, calm and wellorganised: tools hung on nails, seeds in boxes, gardening gloves in pairs: everything where it should be. My shed is prosaic, a glorified allotment locker. I shall not be entering it for Shed of the Year, even in the “Normal Shed” category, because there are far greater works out there, many bordering on the insane.

This is the third year of the competition. Last year, out of a field of more than 1,000 sheds, Tim (sheddies are all on first name terms) romped home with his octagonal “Rugby Pub” shed: a tiny pub in his back garden with “no phone, no TV, no interruptions” — but a fridge, a 15ft fully fitted bar, seagrass matting, a hammock and a shedload of England flags. More than 26,000 people have viewed his masterpiece online.

The 2007 winner was Tony, with his “Roman Temple”. There is a picture of him on the readersheds website in a gladiator outfit. Tony was struck with the thought one day, after visiting the Chelsea Flower Show, that his garden shed would make a great temple. He mocked up some designs on his computer, and after three years his wife relented and bought him four fibreglass columns for Christmas. After that, there was no holding him back: grape motifs, LED lights, amphorae, murals, mosaics — the lot. As Tony says of his folly: “All the best stately homes can look across their estate and see a temple in the distance. It’s just that this one is a bit nearer to the house.”

That is precisely what is great about sheds — they are little cubes of imagination at the ends of our gardens. They allow for the expression of suppressed genius for almost no outlay, and some loving labour. Indeed, expense is frowned on by serious sheddies. Sheds made of recycled front doors and windows from skips, or halved shipping containers, and one entirely constructed from wood for builder’s pallets are the most appreciated.

The pub shed movement is growing. The Forge and Flagon and Frog ’n’ Cat are two famous pub sheds, usually seating two. The Frog was originally a pigeon loft, but now has a faux-leather buttoned bar and DJ decks. A newcomer, The Ship Inn, in Canterbury, “is a bar with a First World War museum for interest, plus dart board”.

I should also mention the eco-sheds, workshops, offices, the “romantic, dirty summerhouse” category, and the “Stealth Shed”, built like a stealth bomber in an alleyway behind conifers. You will not be surprised to hear that dozens of people, from New Zealand to Paisley, Scotland, have built Doctor Who’s blue Tardis in their back garden.

The great shed curator is Uncle Wilco, who set up the readersheds website in 2001 when he tried to buy a shed online and couldn’t find any interesting pictures. “Sheds have always been part of the British way of life. Allotment sheds were the forefathers of the modern shed, where blokes used to build sheds out of bits of wood left around. Thankfully those days are returning. Sheddies have always wanted to show off their sheds, share and comment.” There are more men on readersheds than women, “but the lady sheddies seem to be more creative with shed interiors”.

Uncle Wilco has two sheds: a summerhouse for his missus and “a green shed which is the centre of my shed empire, more used for ideas than actual productive things like potting seeds and storing tat”.

When is a shed too big to be a shed? “Size does not matter,” says Uncle Wilco. “A shed can be sometimes a state of mind, an escape from your normal life or just somewhere you go for a pint of home brew and a crafty smoke.”

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