6 THE UNHEATED GREENHOUSE 



Cornwall, but they are not the type of plant best suited for the 

 unheated greenhouse. Generally, in these cases, it is a ques- 

 tion of expense. Either there is no means of heating or no 

 efficient member of the household to discharge the duty of 

 attending to the greenhouse fire, or it may be the cost of fuel 

 which must be considered with the usual result of a useless 

 greenhouse. Expense may be of little consequence in some 

 gardens, but these are in the minority. Even to those who 

 are ready to spare no expense the coal bill in these days of 

 exorbitant prices becomes a question of some moment, and it 

 is astonishing what a capacious maw is possessed by the 

 monster called a greenhouse furnace. On the score, then, 

 both of initial cost of a permanent heating apparatus and a 

 constantly recurring expense for fuel, I rest a second plea for 

 the cold greenhouse, in spite of its limitations with regard to 

 certain classes of tender plants. 



SIMPLICITY OF MANAGEMENT 



The garden-lover who has no experienced helper perhaps 

 also some who professedly have knows full well the wretched 

 trick the furnace is apt to play of going out on the very night 

 of the hardest frost of the year, of pipes bursting at incon- 

 venient seasons, and the misery of rinding plants ruined and the 

 work of many a happy though arduous day lost for ever. 

 Needless to descant on the daily and nightly joys of the stoke- 

 hole, even when all goes well. But if there be risks and im- 

 pediments such as these when the thermometer falls below 

 freezing-point, there are difficulties more insidious, but none 

 the less real, in regulating a high temperature. Plants grow 

 with amazing rapidity in heat, and the novice is delighted with 

 his early success ; but, alas ! they also lengthen, and before 

 long his plants, like the unfortunates celebrated by Tennyson 



