76 PEACTICAL FLORICULTURE. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



GREENHOUSE STRUCTURES. 



I have a peculiar pleasure in beginning to describe our 

 present modes of constructing greenhouses, well knowicg 

 that hundreds of my readers will turn with interest to 

 this page, in the hope that they may be enlightened on a 

 subject on which doubtless many of them have seriously 

 blundered. I have no reason to complain of success in 

 business, but I feel well assured that, for the first ten 

 years of my time, many thousands of dollars were sacri- 

 ficed in the blunders made in my endeavors to get on the 

 right track. 



There was no fixed system ; all was confusion, hardly 

 two of us building alike, and, in my humble opinion, most 

 of us building wrong. 



The style of greenhouse to be built must be governed 

 by the purpose for which it is wanted. If for the grow- 

 ing of a general assortment of greenhouse or bedding- 

 plants, many years' experience in working of those on 

 the ridge and furrow system, on the extensive scale in use 

 by us, makes us confident in the belief that this system 

 is all we have previously claimed for it, as being the most 

 economical of space, most economical of heat, and most 

 economical in cost of construction. 



For greenhouses to be constructed of movable sashes, 

 figure 16 represents the end section and ground plan of 

 the style of house referred to, which may be used for the 

 purpose of growing Roses, greenhouse or bedding-plants, 

 or anything requiring protection in winter. The green- 

 houses represented in this plan are 100 feet in length, 

 and each eleven feet wide inside. The heating of the 

 whole (that is, the three measuring from the outside walls 

 thirty-six by one hundred feet) is done by one of Hitch- 



