The Outdoor Garden Shower: Now Open for Business

July 16th, 2009

People either get it or they don’t. They either dream of showering outdoors or they think people who want to stand buck nekkid under the water in the great outdoors are nuts.  For the record, I belong in the first category.

I am not at my most fragrant and lovely best at the end of a gardening day. In fact, most Saturdays and Sundays—when I do most of my intensive outdoor work—I have to end the day by vacuuming up the dirt, leaves and mulch I inevitably track or sprinkle in the house. And I stink. I definitely channel my peasant roots on weekends.

So an outdoor shower isn’t just a hedonistic luxury. It serves a practical purpose to de-stinkify the head gardener at our house.

Finally, I bit the bullet and installed the outdoor garden shower this year. I say bit the bullet because I had to hire two men to work for the better part of two days to install it. A licensed plumber ran the pipes through the basement to the great outdoors. A carpenter did most of the rest. If we had done it ourselves, the shower would consist of a cold water hose held up with a nail and a bungee cord. Two men/two days was a good investment.

The size is about 6′ x6′ with an 18″ bench along one side. What you don’t see here is what is underneath. Because the shower is against the house, they installed a French drain with a large tube that runs underground and into the woods. This keeps the moisture from gathering near the house and into the basement.

Tall walls surround the enclosure, but really, that’s a formality considering we live on 20+ acres down a long driveway. In fact, I actually liked showering there better before the guys put up the walls.

Although my husband was an early supporter of the idea, Ben didn’t get the allure of the outdoor shower. But now that it’s built, I notice that more often than not, he’s traipsing outside with a beach towel. Now he gets it.

So, the outdoor shower is open for business.

Posted In: Gardening

Tags: garden, outdoor shower

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