Lean-to greenhouse

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Lean To Greenhouse

Lean-to structural type of greenhouse is rarely used for commercial purposes because of size restrictions, but is the most popular among hobbyists.

The ordinary span or lean-to greenhouse usually finds its place in some corner of the garden, and generally is and ought to be furnished with a front bench and some sort of stage. Dampness and a certain amount of " undress " here is not out of place. One's plants are in their nursery, or, it may be, recruiting ; pans of seedlings may stand about ; Ferns may be tucked away under the stage ; a Mardchal Niel, with its roots in an inside border, or any other climbers one may desire, can be trained up the rafters or on the back- wall ; and pruned back-plants, however shabby-looking, need not hide their diminished heads. What would be incongruous and unsightly in the conservatory is here natural and right.

There is little, perhaps, to be said on so well-worn a theme for the present ; but certain points of construction, important to be considered in putting up any of the types of unheated glasshouses here spoken of, remain to be suggested. Only this let me add. It is the working greenhouse that is the best of all the sanctum sanctorum of the gardener. Who but those who know it can fathom the peace, the rest, the depth of happiness to be found within its hallowed precincts. What marvels of plant life open out there to the patient observer, what strange vagaries of the germination of seeds, what mysterious processes in the germination of Ferns ; what rare loveliness in the silent building up, leaf by leaf, of even the commonest plant ; what exquisite art in the gradual laying on of colours and moulding of buds and flowers !

Aye ! but treasures such as these are only unfolded to the vision of the devout lover who thinks no toil too great that will unlock the cabinet of Nature's secrets ; whose hand is not afraid to risk the roughness of daily tending; whose ear is awake to whispers so low that they are unheeded by idle passers-by ; whose eye is quick to note the changes of an hour. Such reverent students learn to worship while they work, and to them, in the uplifting symbolism of Eastern speech, plants and flowers become, in very truth, as " the fringes of the garment of God."