On the Origins of the Greenhouse

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On the Origins of the Greenhouse

Horticulture was established long before the dawn of recorded history. The art of manuring was also established and understood well before the Christian era. This was the time when the race to produce bigger and better crops started, a race which still goes on today.

One day it was discovered that discarded seeds grew better on a rubbish heap with manure on it than elsewhere. From this the hot bed was developed. It was not until the early days of Christianity that someone discovered that if you dug a pit and grew crops in it then the crops grew better and more quickly - benefiting from the added shelter and the warmth from the soil.

During the second century A.D. came the idea of building an open house, with walls above the ground and growing plants inside. Initially, these structures had no roof but later they were covered with thin slabs of mica (sheet glass was not to be discovered for another century).

Fires were kept burning around the outside to keep the necessary temperature inside. This type of building was called a specularium. Inside these specularia flowers and fruit were forced. When the Emperor Tiberius was ill, so records tell us, he was ordered by his physicians to eat cucumbers every day. These he produced from his specularium, much to the astonishment of his friends. As the Roman Empire fell Roman influence faded and many of their horticultural methods were lost.

It was not until the middle of the thirteenth century that a Dominican friar by the name of Albertus Magnus, one of the great scholars of the time, wrote knowledgeably on the subject of plants. Whilst studying he delved into the writings of the Roman horticulturists, and consequently he revived the practice of forcing fruits and flowers in the hothouse. He was so successful in this that people became suspicious and charged him with witchcraft and he narrowly avoided death.

The next reference we have to greenhouses, is of one in the physic garden, a garden to grow "physic" (medicinal herbs), established in Oxford on the banks of the river Cherwell, by Magdalen College. It is now the Oxford University Botanic Garden and is still on the same site.

The garden was donated by the Earl of Danby, for the purpose of "promoting the arts of horticulture" in 1621. Jacob Bobart, a head gardener from Germany, was employed to run it and he was succeeded by his son. By 1637 the garden's catalogue showed that some sixteen hundred species and varieties of plants were being grown. It was in this garden that a slate roofed greenhouse was built in 1670. It is very interesting to note from records that the house was heated by fire baskets burning charcoal. These were wheeled around the walls by the gardeners! It was also in this garden that the first wooden greenhouse was erected in 1734.

The Society of Apothecaries of London started a garden designed to further the study of botany in 1673, this also contained a greenhouse. This garden, now the Chelsea Physic Garden, is also still on its original site. There is no record of when the greenhouse was erected, but Pepys writes of it as having "subterranean heat conveyed by a stove under the conservatory"

By this time greenhouses were coming into more general use. Owners of large properties began erecting them and they soon became a status symbol -to have two was a hallmark of real wealth! It was not until the Great War that small prefabricated greenhouses began to be made at prices more suitable to the working man, although they were still very expensive - and research still goes on to improve the design of greenhouses for both the commercial and amateur grower.

This article originally appeared in the Members Bulletin, the journal of the National Vegetable Society, which is sent quarterly to members. You can Join the National Vegetable Society here

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