Two Greenhouses. And Not A Pane Of Glass Between Them.
The old greenhouse sits forlornly on the patio, as it has been all summer, having surrendered its former space to the construction of a replacement. Because if there’s anything we’ve learned at all in these years of projects chez nous it’s to always, always, have a fallback plan. You never know what is going to happen and, of equal pertinence, just how long it’s all going to take.
The glass was removed to make carrying the frame easier. All bar one piece, the ventilation pane, deemed at the time as being too awkward to take out. The very next morning as the sun rose over the trees to the east the automatic opening mechanism in the greenhouse roof sprang into action as it always has. Except that there must have been some distortion in the now non-rigid frame… because the next thing we heard was a CRAAACK!! and the tinkling of broken glass falling on concrete. The rest of the panes are safe though. And isn’t it just as well. The nights are turning chilly n’est-ce pas?
Previously, on greenhouse news:
Foundations.
And now, emerging out of the chaos which used to be a garden, a new wall.
To me this scene bears a marked similarity to an archaeological dig. Although perhaps in reverse. And, sadly, with a notable absence of treasure. Both the greenhouse wall builder and the terrace wall builder have used gazebos as weather protection, equally effective against both sun and rain. They’re less resistant to wind. This last Friday it blew a hoolie down here, unexpectedly fierce for mid September. Shortly after breakfast one of the gazebos, the heavier of the two as it happens, literally took to the air, clearing the low hedge and ending up on its side on the river bank. Perilously close to a dunking. Not the easiest of places for a retrieval operation either.
The dimensions of the new greenhouse base need to be accurate to within a 5mm tolerance, no mean feat when the client has opted to use random sizes of stone..
The doorway tolerance is even more exacting, 0mm.
Mike made up a wooden proforma for the builder to work up to. The gap ended up spot on.
The sign of a true craftsman.
Before starting the greenhouse wall the builder made up samples of mortar to find the best colour match. A no-brainer?
And at last it stands ready.
The upper surface of the block in the doorway indicates finished floor level. The wall won’t seem nearly as high when the internal paving is in and the ground has been built up all around the greenhouse.
The holes in the wall nearest the camera will take downpipes for rainwater capture off the roof. The larger space in the farthest wall will be covered by a sliding metal panel, giving the option for warm air to flow freely between the interior of the greenhouse and the cold frame beyond. It means that hardening off young plants can be a smoother transition, lessening the shock of a sudden move out of a warm environment into a much colder one.
The cold frame wall. Again it won’t seem as deep, or as high, when the ground is built up to final level.
As ever on this steeply sloping site, access is the toughest challenge. We’ve lost the steps between the house level and the garden. The earth ramp initially created by the landscaping digger is still needed for the motorised barrow as we continue to move stuff up and down the hill. It’s a quagmire in the wet.
But it’s progress. That will do for me.
And finally:
The old greenhouse hasn’t been entirely idle this summer. Having comprehensively saturated the sitting room floor with their hose the house builders promptly requisitioned it.. as a drying frame for their dust sheets!
Glamping it is not.
Serious greenhouse envy here. We inherited a red cedar Malvern greenhouse when we bought our house. It has mains power and water which is very useful but no means of capturing water or a water but. This could be a future project. I am a bit of a sceptic about water buts. If you have dry summer, like the last two, then the water buts will be empty, when it rains you do not need them as the garden gets watered for free.
It takes 10 watering cans, each of 10 litres to water the courtyard. That is half of a water but, as I water it probably twice a week that is the but emptied in a week. The front bed and veg plots will easily be 15 or up to 20 if emergency help is needed in a dry summer, and that is every day and even then the beans did not thrive this year at all. That would empty the butt in a day. Even if I doubled up it still would only last a couple of days, and let’s be honest water buts are not pretty.
So what I would need is purpose built tanks buried under the lawn, something that my cousins did on Dartmoor when they were growing blueberries professionally. That way they harvested all the rain water of a Devon winter and spring and with that you could do some serious watering. In my fantasy, won the lottery garden, I would also have a solar powered irrigation system, the solar cells could go next to the his and hers solar powered sit on mowers….it’s good to dream.
Still it’s raining buckets here and I have been told to go and harvest some leaks.
And it’s still raining buckets! If we’d had underground water storage today the accumulated volume would probably keep us going for a year.
We talked long and hard about whether to have a mains tap near the greenhouse and in the end decided that we could always run a hose down and fill up the water reservoir via the gutter if needed. Always assuming there isn’t a hosepipe ban of course. But has there ever been one in the West Country? We shall see if the decision was the right one next summer. Very difficult to know what to do in this ever changing climate. Almost as impossible to predict as the B-word.
We have a 1000 litre tank at the top of our garden. The water is pumped up there from three smaller butts at the bottom of the garden (our whole garden is on a slight slope and the tank sits up high on a platform), the pump is powered by solar power. The water is then used to water the garden and polytunnel by gravity through pipes with taps and hoses attached coming back down the garden. I live in one of the wettest places in the UK so we rarely, if ever run out of water.
That sounds like a well thought through arrangement. I have an irrigation system too although it runs off mains water. The greenhouse will have rainwater capture with a hand operated pump inside. Rainwater is far better for plants in any case so hopefully at least some will see the benefit of that and reduce a little of the demand off the mains.
I look forward to every one of your posts both for the pictures as well as your witty commentary regarding your latest adventure. This post reminds me so much of the excavation and foundation construction of our greenhouse. You will be so pleased when it is done and in use!
Thank you!
I will be very pleased. I may have to wade across to it in wellies for a few weeks (through the mud of the building site) but with everything waiting to go inside it I shall be fully productive almost from Day 1. I thoroughly enjoyed pottering in the old greenhouse. Now perhaps I’ll be able to do the same without rain dripping down the back of my neck.
At first I thought you’d been practicing your artisan skills and baking some rather unappetising-looking bread! 😉 But the greenhouse base is looking super, the craftsmanship is/looks perfect. I’m surprised the panes of glass are still intact here with the battering, as this morning one of the old apple trees decided to snap in half, and while it has been wet and windy, I didn’t think it merited the extent of damage. Then again it was semi-hollow, so now is the time to take cuttings and try and graft it before the healthy side goes, maybe spring – when the sap rises – probably need to prop it up and give it a quilt to help it last through winter!
The end photo looks gorgeous with the late summer colour. Looking outside at the grey sky that did cheer me up no end. Cheers!
So sorry to hear about the old apple tree. They are precious!
It used to be that September was such a lovely month. I suppose we are paying for the warmth and sunshine of last week, but it does seem to have moved into full on autumn over the space of a weekend. I’ve got so behind with the garden this year, so much to do and it really has turned into a quagmire.
Flippin ‘eck Jessica, you certainly know how to do things properly. After five and a bit years in our humble cottage, we’re finally learning this after several of our cheap, quick fixes need sorting again. Sigh! And what a great idea to leave holes in the wall for the water – genius! I can’t wait to see the garden all finished . It’s going to be amazing! Xxx
Oh I can assure you there have been plenty of quick fixes around here too. But sometimes that’s what you need to do if the alternative is to go without for years to come. When you first move into a new (old!) place you can’t possibly do everything at once. Quick fixes buy some time.
I have greenhouse envy and that wall is fabulous! But by far the most beautiful photo in this post is your last one. What a garden! I can’t wait to see how the rest of it pans out once you are over the building works.
I can’t wait to get back to the garden. It’s been so neglected this year and now the soil is so wet I would do more harm than good by trampling on it. I have been productively gardening in November before now but there comes a point where my heavy clay gets wet and then stays wet until Spring.. I hope we have not reached that point already.
In a thousand years they will excavate that greenhouse and wonder what gods were worshipped there…. Beeootiful!
Nice contrast with the cloth elephant in the last photo, too.
The god of seed germination. Whoever he is..
The image of the elephant did so make me smile. Thank you Henriet!
🙂 🙂
It is already gorgeous looking and what a brilliant thought-out design. Can’t wait to see the next step. Plus must be nice to have a garden project for you in the midst of all the house chaos.
It’s kept me going to be honest. Maybe with adequate heating it will be a refuge over winter too. We found a small table and a couple of chairs for it last weekend. Lady shed/writing den? It has power and is possibly just within wi-fi range..
So, a week of progress and no setbacks? It all looks to be coming on beautifully, may it continue.
Like others commenting, I too have the greenhouse envy, and especially like the idea of heating the cold frame. Mine has to make do with a covering of hessian sacks, though I have considered hot water bottles before now.
I may still be considering hot water bottles. I’m hoping the predictions of the worst winter for 30 years are just fantasy.
How could we have a week without setbacks? I’ve got behind with the posts (no time to write..). They are of course still to come.
Wow, the greenhouse base looks wonderful. Quite the work of art, and an exacting business of building it with no room for error. Like Jude, I loved seeing the terraced garden behind the old greenhouse, a view which will be even more beautiful when the elephant moves. I laughed about the flying gazebo. It reminded me of an incident in a fierce storm in Wellington NZ when I was a child. The wind was so strong it picked up our wooden henhouse and deposited it upside down in the neighbours’ garden!
Oh no, the poor hens!!
The storms do seem to be getting stronger, and wetter, even in the few years we’ve been living down here in the West Country. It’s dire this week, I wish I could send you some of our excess rain. We’ve put extra drainage into the area around the greenhouse, hopefully it will do the trick.
I hope you’re going to compile the stories of your house and garden renovation projects into a book one day. You could bill it as half comedy and half warning to those embarking on such projects. If the wall is any indication, your new greenhouse is going to be spectacular but your prudence in holding on to the old structure for use in a pinch is to be commended. As I type there are a dozen or more people pounding overhead to install our new roof. They’ll be here all week. I imagine re-thatching a roof is a much quieter operation.
Funnily enough thatching can also be quite noisy. They pound down the straw to get an even coat which we could hear quite clearly from inside the house. Probably lower on decibels, it’s also quite rhythmic, the sort of sound you can dial out and only ‘hear’ when it stops.
I was adamant I was not going to lose the old greenhouse until the replacement is built. This project has gone on so long and we’re into autumn already. Being the sort of gardener who nudges the boundaries on hardiness zones the consequences otherwise would be unthinkable.
More serious greenhouse envy. It’s beautiful, even unfinished. Clever idea about an adjacent cold frame.
Your terraces look wonderful as well.
Ah yes, the terraces.. there may be a story coming up about them!
Looking forward to seeing the completed greenhouse. How big is it?
2.6m x 4m external measurements.
Oh wow, that is a thing of beauty. What craftsmanship. I look forward to the see the finished greenhouse. It seems that the south is wetter than the north at the moment which is rare, I am all for sharing the rain though we get far too much of it!
The south west can’t be too far behind you when it comes to rainfall and at the moment it is particularly dire. It’s a real problem for doing any work outside, especially on our heavy clay. The ground has turned into a sticky mush in places.
Stunning, both greenhouse and garden wall.
Thank you. Don’t get too attached to the garden wall.. 😉
Oh you will all be sorted and raring to go nextspring Jessica. Great have a coldframe adjacent to the greenhouse. I was wondering how you were going to get plants in and out without doing yourself or plants any damage then saw your explanation that the ground will be built up 😂
It will still be something of a balancing act. Perhaps literally.. I’m not very tall! Eventually the cold frame will get a gravel floor and it will be a bit of trial and error to find the right internal level. Too low and I won’t easily be able to reach the back, too high and I’ll restrict the height available for plants. Once the glass lid is fitted I shall conduct some experiments.
J > Any construction work and that’s me glued to the page. Very interesting, though I haven’t managed to work out quite what the big opening in the wall is for.
The greenhouse will need a heater to keep the temperature above zero and perhaps a little more than that given the tender plants I intend to keep in there. Coldframes, by their nature, aren’t artificially heated though they do offer protection from the worst of the elements. It can still be a shock to seedlings to go from one to the other. The opening in the wall between greenhouse and coldframe will allow free movement of air which should hopefully raise the temperature of the coldframe a degree or two, meaning that I can acclimatise seedlings more gradually. When not needed I can use a metal sliding flap to close off the opening and keep all of the warm air in the greenhouse.
I think I’m having greenhouse envy. It’s going to be absolutely gorgeous! Can’t wait to see it finished. By the way, all your recent new post notifications have gone to my junk mail. Not sure that’s particularly useful information for you, but just on the off chance that it’s happening to others and/or if you know how to avoid that happening?? I do keep telling my computer they are not junk but it seems to be ignoring me!
I find all sorts of things in junk mail (that shouldn’t be) and I don’t know what to do about it either. Thanks for letting me know. I believe it has to do with the way the filters are set up on the recipient’s mail server although I may be wrong. If so it’s not something I can do anything about, unfortunately. I really should get back to putting notifications on social media as well but the way things are going at the moment it is hard enough to keep up with the blog never mind anything else.
Hope you are both well, loving your monthly posts!
I’ve had trouble getting comments to come through recently, so trying through Reader….love you greenhouse, and the garden is looking lovely too!
Thanks Gerrie. You aren’t the first person to mention the trouble with commenting. I’ve now switched the comment form to the WordPress standard offering and hope that might fix it. If you get a chance could you let me know?
I’ve been catching up properly on your blog posts and realise how much has been happening in your corner. Thank you for your recent kind comment on my blog. Much appreciated. The design of your new greenhouse is great! I like the attached cold frame. I guess the rain and wind is a problem at the moment and hope it’s not stopping progress. I’ll be good when that project is complete and you can enjoy the new facility of the glasshouse. Always planning going on with future gardening, but satisfying. 😊
The weather has been dreadful, I hope it hasn’t affected you too much.
I shall certainly enjoy retreating to the greenhouse with more bad weather approaching. Gardening has been a distinctly on/off affair these past few weeks. But with so much going on around the place I’d got woefully behind anyway. Hate it when that happens. The garden looks such a mess.