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If you are looking to build your own greenhouse then you should know they have a long history going back several hundred years. Back then they would most likely be known as conservatories. They were used to grow the specimens brought back by people (mostly nobles at the time) making their grand European tours or from the new countries being discovered around the world.

These conservatories were used to grow food as well as house exotic specimens from around the world. They allowed the Europeans to have such delicacies as oranges that would be grown in an orangery (or orangerie), so called as that was their specific purpose as a greenhouse. Even as long ago as 30AD, a greenhouse was built to provide cucumbers for the Roman Emperor Tiberius. As glass manufacturing had not been discovered yet, light entered their form of a greenhouse through sheets of mica. Even early American pioneers used thin sheets of mica to allow light into their homes well into the 19th century as glass was still expensive and hard to transport across the country then.

Greenhouses today use glass and certain translucent plastics to make up their walls and roofs. Glass and these plastics allow the whole light spectrum to pass through into your structure. However, they also prevent all of the different types of light waves from passing back through the walls and roofs.

You know about infrared and how that is a heat source within light. When something, you for instance, give off heat, we can see it through special glasses. Likewise, this wavelength of light can be used to heat up our greenhouses or conservatories.

Open your car door and get inside on a bright day full of sunshine, especially in summer, and you know all about how light can heat the inside of a structure with glass walls. Greenhouses put this principle to work.

Not only does sunlight coming through the glass or plastic provide a heat source, it provides the light that green growing things need to grow and reproduce. This is done through the process of photosynthesis and as the name implies, it needs “photo” or light to get this process going in order to maintain life.

Greenhouses are also the artificial structure that allows us to control what gets at our plants. An outside garden may have to deal with hail, freezing temperatures, too much rain, and assorted pests such as deer. Not so within a conservatory where we can much more easily control these factors. So when you build your own greenhouse, be sure you build it so these things can’t affect your plants.

Not only do greenhouses provide great utility to the gardener, they add value to the home whether as a free-standing structure or an addition to the home as a sun room. You can even buy or have built some amazing architecturally wonderful conservatories that will be a delight to the eyes as well as providing delight to the gardener’s heart.

Tags: gardening, garden