ideas for landscaping your home, gardens, home improvement tips, water features & garden decoration
Planning Your Garden
The humble garden frame is another matter. It sits snugly on the ground, and does not take on airs. Its usefulness no one can deny, and its place is in the vegetable plot.
If, in spite of all, the gardener decides to invest some part of his capital in "glass," then let him beware of the cheap, jerry-built, stock houses which are occasionally offered to a confiding public. They are not all bad, but they all have the same family likeness on paper, and the inexperienced buyer is tempted to buy the largest he can get for the sum he is prepared to spend, or the cheapest for a given size.
The greenhouse at its best is but a skeleton structure, if we neglect the glass, and is an easy prey to weather influence. If framed of wood of small scantling, or of unsound quality, the decay comes sooner and proceeds more rapidly. Joints give and parts warp out of shape, "and then the deluge" in a literal sense. Once a house becomes leaky it is almost hopeless to attempt to make it sound again. Better, therefore, to do without than to install a cheap affair that will do duty only for a few seasons.
The best guarantee of quality is price and the reputation of the firm from which you buy.
The term "conservatory" is generally applied to a glass house forming a permanent annex to the house. It has the advantage over an unwarmed detached greenhouse of borrowing warmth from the house in winter, and is useful for protecting pot plants from frost. If tastefully kept and of sufficient size, it forms an excellent approach to the garden. One not infrequently finds one on the north side of the house, where it gets no sun, and is, therefore, only fitted for sheltering a few ferns.
Builders indulge in flights of fancy in connection with the conservatory, in the form of chevaux-de-frise, ornamental finials, and colored glass panes. They hope by these attractions (?) to sell or let the house. The man of taste, however, will prefer the structure to be a piece of good plain woodwork glazed with clear glass. I know of nothing more distracting than to enter a conservatory into which the sun is casting contrasting beams of blue and yellow light indifferently upon flowers and foliage. If for purposes of privacy it is desirable that the glass be translucent it is better to use white prismatic or ground glass. Leaded glass in which the prevailing tint is a pale green is not objectionable. The conservatory floor should be tiled and sloped to a gutter to carry to the outside the water spilled in spraying the plants.
A heating system is essential, and in this connection it is well to take and abide by the expert advice of the established greenhouse builders. Much benefit will be had from a perusal of the book "Gardening Under Glass."
