146 The Art of Landscape Gardening 



flower-garden is not too far from the house; but amongst 

 the refinements of modern luxury may be reckoned 

 that of attaching a greenhouse to some room in the 

 mansion, a fashion with which I have so often been 

 required to comply that it may not be improper, in this 

 work, to make ample mention of the various methods 

 by which it has been effected in different places. 



At Bowood, at Wimpole, at Bulstrode, at Attingham, 

 at Dyrham Park, at Caenwood, at Thoresby, and 

 some other large houses of the last century, green- 

 houses were added to conceal offices behind them, and 

 they either became a wing of the house or were in the 

 same style of architecture: but these were all built at a 

 period when only orange-trees and myrtles or a very few 

 other greenhouse plants were introduced, and no light 

 was required in the roof of such buildings. In many of 

 them, indeed, the piers between each window are as large 

 as the windows. Since that period the numerous tribe 

 of geraniums, ericas, and other exotic plants, requiring 

 more light, have caused a very material alteration in the 

 construction of the greenhouse ; and perhaps the more it 

 resembles the shape of a nurseryman's stove, the better it 

 will be adapted to the purposes of a modern greenhouse. 

 Yet such an appendage, however it may increase its in- 

 terior comfort, will never add to the external ornarhent 

 of a house of regular architecture : it is therefore generally 

 more advisable to make the greenhouse in the flower- 

 garden, as near as possible to without forming a part 

 of the mansion ; and in these situations great advantage 

 may be taken of treillage ornaments to admit light, whilst 

 it disguises the ugly shape of a slanting roof of glass. 



There is one very material objection to a greenhouse 

 immediately attached to a room constantly inhabited, 

 viz. that the smell and damp from a large body of earth 



