418 SATURDAY IN MY GARDEN 



your experiment in despair. Your greenhouse will in due time 

 become a storehouse for rubbish, or serve no more useful purpose 

 than that of a tool-shed. If this be its fate its downfall in your 

 affections will have been brought about solely owing to the fact 

 that you tried to accomplish the impossible. 



The greenhouse, if it is to serve its purpose adequately, and if 

 it is to afford you the maximum of pleasure, must be soundly 

 built and properly heated. Therefore, if you contemplate buying 

 a greenhouse, go to a long-established and therefore practical and 

 experienced maker, and see that you have a reliable and efficient 

 heating apparatus installed. The latter is as important as the first. 



Experience has taught that nothing can excel the common 

 method of heating a greenhouse by means of a boiler and hot- 

 water pipes. It is true that the initial expense is somewhat 

 heavy it will cost you between four and five pounds to fix the 

 apparatus to a small greenhouse but the outlay on fuel will be 

 insignificant compared with the cost of running an oil stove. Coke 

 is cheap ; oil is dear. The heating of a small greenhouse by 

 means of an oil stove works out at two shillings a week, or, say, 

 two pounds ten shillings for the winter months. The expenditure 

 on coke sufficient to heat a fair-sized house, say, one twelve feet by 

 nine feet, will be well under a pound for the same period. Thus in 

 a few years you will have more than paid for the hot-water heating 

 apparatus by the saving of expenditure on oil. Add to this the 

 certainty that your plants will thrive better in a house heated by 

 hot water, and you have an unanswerable argument against the 

 use of the small oil lamp. 



A little experience in the management of a greenhouse soon con- 

 vinces its owner that it requires constant attention ; that neglect, 

 even for a couple of days, may mean all the difference between 

 success and failure ; that he must be an expert stoker, with one eye 

 constantly on the thermometer and the other on his stove ; and 

 that, above all, he must study weather conditions closely, and if 

 possible turn himself into a human barometer, so that he shall 

 be able to anticipate and guard against violent atmospheric 

 changes. 



