THE AMATEUR’S
GREENHOUSE AND CONSERVATORY.
INTRODUCTION.
“Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.
Unconscious of a less propitious clime,
There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,
While the winds whistle and the snows descend.
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All plants, of every leaf, that can endure
The winter’s frown, if screened from his shrewd bite,
Live there, and prosper.”Cowper.
The briefness of the British summer and the frequent interruptions to out-door enjoyment, occasioned by adverse weather, render the well-kept plant house a place of most agreeable resort at every season of the year. The capabilities of our climate are truly wonderful, for we may, with a considerable degree of safety, enrich our gardens with plants that are natives of subtropical and arctic climes; and yet we find our varying selection of subjects seriously restricted unless we are aided by plant houses of some kind or other, to ensure for our favourites better conditions than the unprotected soil and free atmosphere would afford them. Hence, for pleasure and utility alike, the various structures that have been adopted as aids in plant-culture are of the utmost importance to the horticultural amateur, for they bring within the range of his observation and practice the vegetable products of climes that differ greatly in conditions from our own, and they may be so managed as to provide the best possible imitation of a perpetual spring, or of “summer all the year round.”
The object of this little work is to afford some useful
