Glasshouses
for tender plants have been around since Roman times
(the Romans used glasshouses to grow grape vines in
colder climates), and early glasshouses were erected
in England in the very late sixteenth century, but
they did not become a widely-used garden feature until
the later seventeenth century.
At
that stage they remained, however, the preserve of
the wealthy, who used glasshouses to raise citrus
and exotics fruits. The large estates of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries continued to build extensive
glasshouses, generally along south-facing walls, in
which to grow both fruits and flowers. These glasshouses
were often heated, whether by coke or wood stoves
(whose fumes could occasionally kill the plants),
and later with steam or hot water pipes fed with an
onsite boiler. The early stoves 'conserved' the tender
plants, thus the word conservatory for glasshouses
or greenhouses. Shutters, mats or other coverings
could also be deployed on extra cold nights in order
to 'conserve' heat within the glasshouse, and plant
pots could be plunged into beds of manure of tanner's
bark to further warm them.
While
the wealthy enjoyed glasshouses from the seventeenth
century, glasshouses for the gardening masses did
not take off until the nineteenth century, when affordable
'flat-pack' glass houses began to be made available.
Suddenly gardeners had somewhere to not only raise
seeds and kitchen crops, but also somewhere to overwinter
tender plants that previously they'd had no opportunity
to grow.
Both
images to the left depict traditional glasshouses.
The lower one, used for growing vines, also shows
grape bottles. These were used to keep bunches of
grapes - the bunch, picked so it had a long stalk,
would have that stalk inserted into the narrow neck
of the bottle (the bottles laying on their side in
special racks). The water could be periodically topped
up via the hole in the centre top of the bottle. Bunches
of grapes could thus be kept for many months in a
cool storage house, supplying the big house with grapes
well into the winter.
