Greenhouses
Indoor Growing
Photography: Kirsten Shultz
A greenhouse can be a wonderful distraction from the long winters here.
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A greenhouse may be as grand as a summer palace or as plain as a muddy old shoe. It may be an architect’s dream of Victorian splendor, a homely Quonset hut or just pieced-together plastic and wire.
The elegant ones are often called “conservatories,” and are frequently given over to the cities where they are built to become educational facilities, though not always. And the plain ones serve to gladden the heart of only the gardener who tends them.
Greenhouses are ultimately democratic, for the same sun beats on them whether they are beautiful or ordinary and the same mice attempt to wiggle in to snack on the botanical products inside.
There are many companies that will sell you plans for greenhouses, including one from the UK that asks: “What could be nicer than picking your own lemons or grapes, or sitting in the shade of an enormous passionflower.”
Well, put that way, how could you not want a greenhouse?
Hollywood has used greenhouses in many films—there’s something inspiring about all that glass to break—usually portraying the avid gardener as eccentric (think Katherine Hepburn potting a plant and giving sage advice) or murderous (think any number of scary movies) or a great place to hide booze (think Days of Wine and Roses.) But truth be told, greenhouses are usually tended by nice people who like flowers and vegetables (OK, there was the rich man in St. Louis who filled his tall greenhouse with exotic birds and big plants and was said to have a giraffe in the mix until city fathers cracked down on him.)
But whether you favor a greenhouse palace or a very simple shelter, whether you want to grow hothouse flowers or vegetables, your greenhouse can make you happy year-round.
Idaho’s famed professional “farmgirl” Mary Jane Butters, who runs an organic operation in Moscow, writes in her Mary Jane’s Ideabook Cookbook Lifebook, “You could be supplying your family’s daily quota of winter greens from September through May nonstop, without ever going to the grocery store. All you need is a simple unheated plastic hoop-house and a selection of frost-tolerant seed.”
There’s plenty of free advice for do-it-yourself types on the Internet, as well.Beyond what you can grow, gardening is good for you and good for others. A national program called Greenhouse Grants provides greenhouses to facilities that use horticulture as a treatment in working with older adults, families at risk, abused children, and people with physical or mental disabilities. The foundation was started by a family as a way to remember a lost son.
Beyond the therapeutic values, some use greenhouses to provide produce to sell at local farmer’s markets. So you could grow your own greens, or fill your greenhouse with flowers. As one greenhouse fan rhapsodized in The New York Times: On a gray cold winter day you can fling open that greenhouse door and be enveloped by the brilliant colors and scents of summer. >>>
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