History of the Greenhouse

Like algebra, glass is believed to have originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Persia. Around 2000 BC in the Middle East, sand was being melted and poured into molds for knives and arrowheads.  Over time glassmaking methods improved, allowing for more creative and practical uses, and by 600 BC, glass recipes were in use.

Although glassmaking  still wasn’t advanced enough to produce sheets large enough for use in a greenhouse, that didn't stop Roman Emperor Tiberius’s insistence that his gardeners find a way to cultivate cucumbers year round. Their best efforts yielded the Secularium : a south facing heated cold frame made with pieces of semi transparent mica.

Most historians credit French Botanist Jules Charles with designing the first greenhouse, or glasshouse as they were called then,  around 1600. For the next century, wealthy landowners in Britain, Holland and France experimented with new greenhouse designs.  Because glass could only be made in small panes, the same technique of using lead casings to hold stained glass windows together in medieval churches was used  to install glazing in greenhouses.

Around 1700 wealthy merchants in England began growing warm season plants, including citrus trees in glasshouses. The successful ‘Orangery’ design consisting of a sloping roof, and three glass walls anchored to a south facing brick wall is still in use today. Decomposing manure was used to keep the ground warm in the orangeries, raising bed temperatures to between 110 and 140 degrees. It wasn’t until the late 1700’s when more English growers began to note the contrast of fruits and vegetables in the orangeries to  winter landscape outside that the term greenhouse was first used.

Around the same time, across the Atlantic, George Washington is reported  to have grown pineapples under glass at Mt. Vernon in his own ‘Pinery’ , which he would proudly serve to dinner guests.

Greenhouses became  more common around 1850, when glass could finally be manufactured in large sheets, and was much less expensive. At the time, wrought iron was the framing material of choice, and because of it’s strength, was used to create massive display greenhouses that became centerpieces at botanical gardens in both Britain and the US.

Perhaps the best known of these colossal 19^th century structures is the Crystal Palace, which was built in London’s Hyde Park for the 1851 World’s Fair. Measuring about 410’ wide by 1850’ long, it boasted 19 acres of covered grow area, nearly a million square feet of glass, and featured fountains that could propel water jets 250’ high.

A smaller, but still grand contemporary of the Crystal Palace - The Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew – was built in 1848 and measured 10’wide by 363’ long and 66’ high.

Because of the constraints of shipping embargoes during the civil war, the early English Victorian conservatory craze bypassed the US, and it wasn’t until the Gilded Age began in the late 1860’s that large scale greenhouses were built here. One notable structure from this era is the 1868 House built by Englishman Henry Shaw, in what eventually became the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The 12,000 square foot Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park was assembled in 1879 largely from parts manufactured and shipped over from Europe.  This conservatory is considered the oldest wood and glass greenhouse in the US, with much of the framing made with the extremely durable Cailfornia Redwood species.  The structure has been completely restored and placed on the National Register of Historic Places after repairing structural damage and removing lead paint and other dangerous  materials.

The fresh fruit and flower market that grew from these early greenhouses thrived and lead to the rapid expansion of greenhouses all over Western Europe.  In the days before produce would be shipped to far flung corners of the world, greenhouses of immense value to local market growers. By 1880, tomatoes were being cultivated under glass in European Greenhouses.

The loss of millions of working men on the Western Front brought decline to  labor intensive greenhouse industry slowed after WWI that lasted until after WWII, when aluminum and galvanized steel became widely available and all but replaced wood in greenhouse framing.  Also, around this time, polycarbonate acrylic and polyethylene sheeting gave growers inexpensive glazing options that also offered more insulating value than glass.

Born from these widely available and inexpensive high performance plastics and metals, the modern greenhouse market has thrived in Europe -  especially Britain where small greenhouses are employed in a seeming majority of garden plots – and is quickly picking up steam here in the United States.