Bottle Dome

Shed Features

The Bottle Dome is one of several follies in my garden which is open to visitors every day through the summer. See www.westonburymillwatergardens.com

My shed is a dome made with about 5000 glass bottles set between crossed arches - like a huge hot-cross bun. Some part of the glass hemisphere directly faces the sun at all times of the day, giving an extraordinary sparkle which is reflected in an interior pool. It has a bench inside and is quite big (3.1 m from floor to the inside ceiling and 5.0 m in width). It is a feature for my garden.

Other Shed info

I made every part of the dome myself - and emptied a good few of the bottles! The arches and the door frames are made of reinforced concrete for strength. To avoid the shiny white concrete appearance I lined the inside of the shuttering with pieces of limestone before pouring the concrete. After 24 hours I removed the outside of the shuttering and scrubbed the surface of the half dry concrete to leave an attractive gravel face. The bottles were mortared into the four quadrants between the arches with the necks of the bottles always pointing to the centre of the building. In that way the sunlight comes directly down the bottles.