Pulling your coat tighter around you just makes the wind mad, and it blows the rain directly into your face. Is it even rain any more, or is it ice at this point? It’s easily cold enough. You’re trying to navigate by looking at the ground immediately in front of your feet, because if you look up the frozen air will whip under your hood and around your neck and try to strangle you with icy claws. The grey ground is separated from the grey sky by only a line of black, bare branches of dead looking trees. The color has all gone underground to wait for spring, apparently. And then you make it to the greenhouse. Step inside and you’re in a different world. It’s a safe haven for color and warmth, and it’s enough to finally get you to first unzip, and eventually take off your coat to let the warmth and humidity creep in under your clothes and start to thaw you out. There may be some tropical plants that are taking refuge for the winter until it’s safe enough to go back to the front porch of the house, or there may be tables full of rows of seedlings or plants that are nearly visibly engaged in growing, oblivious to the howling, freezing weather outside. Dark green leaves make a bed for deep red Poinsettias or plate-sized yellow Hibiscus blooms. As you unbutton your flannel shirt, you realize that the only thing between you and the malicious outdoors is a very thin layer of plastic. It’s incredible, and it’s nothing short of magic.
The first greenhouse I ever encountered got delivered a good whallop by my brother and me. When we were little kids, our mom worked at Ellison’s Greenhouse in Brenham. One summer, she found a high school girl that lived just a half a mile or so away from the greenhouse who naively agreed to watch us during the day. I think she was pretty glad when Mom came to get us in the afternoon. One day we were at the greenhouse for whatever reason, and Mom left us alone for just a minute while she went in to turn off some sprinklers, or something. In about 20 seconds, my brother and I had found two nursery carts and had arranged a race across the greenhouse, or we were trying to crash them into each other, or one of those kinds of things little boys think of when they get even a tiny bit bored. The thing about a greenhouse is its thin covering of plastic is very good at doing what it’s meant to do: letting light in while keeping the cold out. It is NOT meant to be able to withstand two little boys armed with nursery carts. Consequently, when Mom finished what she was doing, she found the nursery carts put away where we found them and the two of us sitting quietly and patiently, hoping she wouldn’t notice the hole in the corrugated sliding door to the greenhouse. She noticed.
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| Poinsettias in Ellison's Greenhouse, 1982 |
Years later I wound up living in Nacogdoches and working for a small nursery in nearby Lufkin. The nursery owner had several interests, and one of them was Night Blooming Cereus (Epiphyllum oxypetalum). He had a few great big ones that were his personal plants- his pets- that he kept in a homemade greenhouse at the nursery. I had grown up with roses, but I was pretty unfamiliar with most houseplants and tropicals. So the Cereus with its flat, vein-lined leaves and alien, pulpy fruit were fascinating.
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| Night Blooming Cereus |
Somewhere along the way, I became intrigued by gourds. So when someone told my dad he could have an old greenhouse frame that was too wobbly to be used for a greenhouse any more, I jumped at the chance to grow gourds on it. My new “gourd arbor” was thirty feet long and fifteen feet tall. One side I covered in Luffa gourds and the other supported a mixture of dipper gourds, apple gourds, birdhouse gourds and kettle gourds.
If I believed in luck, I would say I’ve been incredibly lucky in all of my various “greenhouse” endeavors. My dad had a small farm outside of College Station on the Brazos River where I was able to experiment with gourds, discover the heartbreak of homemade cold frames, and basically just be a plant-nerd to my heart’s content. Next to my former-greenhouse-turned-gourd-arbor I decided to construct my own cold frame to protect a bunch of rose cuttings I was trying to nurture into rose bushes. That was… interesting.
So, apparently an essentially square wooden frame with plastic tacked to it doesn’t really make a good greenhouse. Now I know. Some of the problems that really should have been obvious from the outset showed up pretty fast. Especially when the rain started.
Greenhouse have an arched roof for a very good reason. This also demonstrates the incredible elasticity of (relatively) cheap plastic.
For several years, I worked at a retail nursery in north Austin. The owner decided he no longer wanted to deal with a twenty-four foot greenhouse frame that had been leaning against the back wall of the nursery for years. What that really means is that is was time to either move it or give it away, and he dreaded the thought of moving it. I, meanwhile, couldn't wait to get my hands on a real greenhouse frame, even if I had to take it apart myself and figure out how to move it to Dad’s farm.
I took pictures like crazy so I would have a reference to how it was supposed to go back together.
And how it wasn’t.
This poor greenhouse frame has been moved all over half of Texas by this point. For a while it lived behind a house my wife and I rented in south Austin. Did my neighbors complain? Not if I didn’t complain about their rooster crowing every morning.
I also acquired (as a birthday present) a little kit greenhouse. It’s darn cute.
When we finally bought our own house, out in Elgin, I made immediate plans for a greenhouse; this time from a slightly smaller frame I got from a defunct Bougainvillea grower.
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| (the last two sections were just temporary; I needed a little more storage space for houseplants in the winter) From my same, incredibly generous, former boss who gave me the first greenhouse frame, I got some oooold French doors that I fantasize about someday building into a much nicer greenhouse. It’ll be mostly glass, have automatic vents, a fine-misting system, possibly a heated floor… an’ we’ll live offa da fatta da land, right George? Well, that’s what ‘someday’ is for, right? |
My wife calls this dream-greenhouse our ‘Orangery’, like a wealthy land-baron would use to keep his exotic citrus trees and huge tree ferns. Speaking of which, I’ve seen some pretty spectacular greenhouses.
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The Conservatory at Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania. Way too grand to call a “greenhouse” any more. And in one of the most famous gardens in the world… |
… the Kew Garden Conservatory. For those greenhouse-empire building plant-nerds. With a whole lot of money.
A couple of years ago, we were on vacation in Medina, TX, and checked out this nursery with a greenhouse built into the side of a hill.
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| Medina Valley Greenhouse. That wall on the left is the side of a hill that they built right into. This greenhouse ain’t blowing away. |
Here’s a little greenhouse at The Antique Rose Emporium. I don’t know that they actually grow anything in there, but like so many things The Antique Rose Emporium does, it is the definition of “cottagey”, in the best way possible. I love it.
And finally, here’s a “greenhouse” we visit every year about this time on our annual River Walk/margarita/Botanical Garden weekend in San Antonio.
My wife asked my once if this ever gave me ideas about our own greenhouse. I said it would take a lot more old rusted French doors. But what the heck. Someday…
