The sheer number of balmy summer days the UK has been blessed with this year hasn’t sent most of us rushing to run a nice warm bath. Unless, that is, your bath is outside in your garden, like mine. Rinsing the shampoo out of my hair with cool running water while looking up at a pure blue sky is just the tonic and, as I sink further down into the water, I feel quite smug. Installing this has been one of my better ideas.
Last year, I had to say goodbye to my indoor bathtub. I love a soak, and have always preferred a bath to a shower. A bath helps me unwind and relax but when my fiancé, Paul – who has been using a wheelchair for two decades – moved into my bungalow last year, we adapted my bathroom into a wet room to better serve his needs. But as the room’s on the small side it meant that I had to lose my indoor bath in the process.
Without the room (or, crucially, the funds) to create another space for a tub, I made peace with a bath being a thing of the past. Until I saw the trend for installing them outdoors. Their advocates claimed that outdoor baths could be in situ for just a few hundred pounds. I was sold.
There’s a spot of Indian stone under our kitchen window where the cold tap is, making it the perfect location. Securing the tub itself was easy. I tracked down an immaculate second-hand roll-top bath with fancy chrome feet on Facebook Marketplace for £150 and the seller delivered it just 24 hours later. Then, Paul contacted a plumber to install a hot tap at the side of our bungalow – right next to the cold tap – for £70. Three days after we first enquired, that was done too. We added short hoses on the taps to fill the bath and got another length of flexible hose to enable the bath to drain from the waste pipe into a nearby threshold drain.
We’re lucky to have a decent-sized garden and only one neighbour, otherwise our home in Staffordshire is mostly overlooked by forest. Nevertheless, Paul fashioned a privacy screen, sourcing four 120cm-tall wooden slatted panels from Ikea (£60 each) which we’ve softened with several tall plants – bamboos and clematis. Crucially, the screens cover my modesty (and protect from any prying eyes in the forest, rare though that would be) without blocking light into the kitchen. The screens also hide my bath from our garden views. The plants are view-side, so it just looks like a plant feature. With a pretty blue-and-white-striped outdoor rug from B&Q (a steal at just £25), the scene is set.
Bathing in the back garden isn’t some niche kink. Searches for “outdoor baths” have risen 40 per cent in a year, says Kevin Sears, e-commerce director of bath manufacturer 34 St John: “Our SEO [search engine optimisation] team has tracked a significant increase in searches around outdoor bathing, with Google Trends showing UK interest in outdoor baths rising by around 40 per cent year-on-year. Search demand across terms such as ‘outdoor bathtub’, ‘wood-fired outdoor bath’, ‘outdoor copper bath’ and ‘outdoor bath ideas’ now exceeds 1,600 searches a month in the UK, despite the category being almost non-existent five years ago.”
The trend, says Johnny Pearce, co-director of outdoor installation specialist Oltco, began to take shape in Britain’s luxury hotel and members’ club scene several decades ago. “Babington House in Somerset was particularly influential in the late 1990s, when its metal baths helped turn bathing into part of the wider escape offered by a countryside retreat. Since, outdoor baths have increasingly appeared at boutique hotels, cabins and high-end holiday lets, allowing people to experience the luxury of bathing outside before considering how they might recreate it at home.”
In other words, garden bathers like myself are making our homes and gardens places where we can recreate that sense of wellness as well as switch off. And crucially, a bath can integrate neatly with the flora and fauna of a garden rather than simply being a huge hunk of plastic – plus the necessary electrical supply or generator – that denotes a hot tub.
“What separates an outdoor bath from a hot tub is usually the simplicity of the design and how naturally it fits into its surroundings,” says Pearce, adding: “An outdoor bath can be set among planting and paired with materials such as copper, stone and timber. Done well, it feels like a secluded extension of the garden.”
Enamel baths like mine work well, too, as they’re durable. I keep my bath protected from dirt and detritus with a motorbike cover that was just £11 online. The measurements are just about right to cover a 170cm bath tub.
The results? Absolutely dreamy. A bath. Outside. In nature. With the warm or cool water flowing under a concerto of clematis and swaying bamboo, birds overhead. I’ve had several baths after days of caring full-time and it’s the perfect way to calm and clean, to rest and reset.
While I haven’t had chance yet, I can see myself enjoying my outdoor bath even as the temperatures plummet this winter. I like the idea of warming water lapping around my shoulders and a cool breeze on my face. It’s been one of the most affordable luxuries I own and has already paid for itself in several hours of bathing. The “me time” is a blessing and so is being outside. This second-hand tub ensconced in plants has fast become my favourite part of our home.