The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-12-29 00:00:00

THE INTRODUCTION OF GLASS-
HOUSES.

In an article on "Gardening under Glass" the
Evening Standard says :
Glasshouses, of one sort and another, for gardening
purposes, are now in such universal favour, and are
set up on so enormous a scale, that it is difficult to realise
that the whole system may almost be said to have
been created within the lifetime of many who are
now living. We do not mean that there were no
glasshouses for gardening purposes till within so
recent a petiod ; but since the establishment of the
Royal Horticultural Society's Gardens at Chiswick in
1822, the whole system of construction, heating, and
arrangement has been almost entirely developed.
Glass had no doubt been employed for the shelter of
exotic plants for a long time. When our merchant.
men began to push into distant quarters of the earth,
they brought home fruits and plants and seeds, which
found their way into many a monastery garden and
it became, of course, an object of vary general desire
to screen denizens of warm climates from the severity
of our winter, and the employment of glass was no
doubt a contrivance of comparatively eArly date. A
leading horticultural authority of the 16th century,
however, seems to have bad not the slightest idea of
even a gla,s3 shelter for plants in winter time, and it
was not till Char:et ll.'s time that glass and artificial
heat was employed in the cultivation of what Pepys
calls " exotque plants." Perhaps the earliest record
of any practical result of efforts in this direction is to
be found in that drawing of which the Horticultural
Society are rather proud, and in which the gardener
at Hampton Court is reverently bending the knee
before the Merry Monarch and presenting him a home.
grown pineapple. That oranges were grown in this
country about the same time is shown by that passage
in which Pepys makes mention of " exotique plants."
It was at Hackney, he says, that he first saw oranges
grown; and with that candour which, no doubt, came
of his complete confidence in the undecipherable cha•
meter of the shorthand in which he wrote his diary,
he sass, "I puffed off a little one by stealth, the man
being mightily curious of them, and ate it, and it was
just as other little green, small oranges are." Our
forefathers, however, do not seem to have been very
enthusiastic gardeners, and advance in any depart-
ment of horticultural art was very slow. From a book
published in 1724 may he gathered what was then the
bat form of conservatory and the most efficient system
of heating. The floricalturist who finds the plants in
his glasshouse damp off in the winter, is recommended
to use a little charcoal fire which, after it has burnt
clear and has done smoking, is to be hung up between
the windows and the plants. Perhaps, however, that
was the best method available for amateurs only, for
the system of heating by flues was certainly known at
that time, and was occasionally adopted, though ap-
parently in a very clumpy and ineffi9icut forms DAM

a century later, however, when the Horticultural
Society was established, heating by hotwater pipes
was almost unknown, and the whole modern system
of conservatory and greenhouse gardening had to be
developed. Very little science had been brought to
bear upon the subject, and such conservatories as are
now to be met with in all corners of the kingdom it
would have been impossible to maintain even fifty
years ago.