LEISURE GARDENING


GLASS HOUSES


consider the past when designing your greenhouse BY PJ GARTIN


is always restricted to the size of the vessel, and balancing the interior environment is rife with trial and error. If you crave a grander, more controlled approach to glass-enclosed gardening, you’ll need an archi- tectural plan.


Although many 21st-century


128 CSD


Visitors to Charleston frequently assume that every plant on Earth thrives in our landscapes. The truth is that outdoor gardening—even here in paradise—is determined by longitude, latitude and altitude. In other words, geography controls all things botanical


and not green thumbs. That is, of course, unless you own a greenhouse.


These buildings, whether modest utilitarian hobby struct- ures or magnificent custom-built glass temples, are nothing more than exceptionally large terrar- iums. Plant selection, however,


greenhouse designs take the guesswork out of hothouse gardening (some are even configured with programmable climate-control smartphone apps), semblances of green- houses have been around since the Roman Emperor Tiberius contrived a way to grow cucum- bers in winter. But it wasn’t until the 18th century that greenhouses as we now think of them came into existence. Sailing with nautical explorers such as James Cook, Alexander von Humboldt and Louis Antoine de Bougainville, court-appointed herbalists filled ships’ holds with botanical booty from distant lands solely for the pleasure of kings and queens. These greenhouses were, therefore, first designed as royal grand-scale trophy cases.


While the Dutch pioneered


greenhouse design and con- struction in Europe, colonial America was more influenced by


English botanist and herbalist Philip Miller (1691 – 1771), who has an interesting connection to Charleston’s gardening heritage. Once Miller’s phenomenal


opus, The Gardener’s Dictionary Containing the Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen Fruit and Flower Garden (1731), reached this side of the pond, Charleston’s gardening elite embraced it. Portions of this book also contain lengthy discussions on greenhouse design—clear down to specifics on stoves.


So what does this have to do with modern greenhouses in Charleston? Because of our devotion to our horticultural ancestry, plus our renowned reputation for competitive gardening, it seems fitting that a grand Charleston greenhouse deserves at least a whiff of his- torical accuracy.


One suggestion is to make use of an 1813 greenhouse il- lustration by Charlestonian John Izard Middleton (1785 – 1849). Middleton (his father, Arthur, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence), who grew up on Middleton Plantation and lat- er became an internationally re- spected artist and archaeologist, must have known about Miller. After all, it’s difficult to imagine


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