HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



1519 



1863. Glasshouses were fully described in 1804 by 

 Gardiner and Hepburn, and in 1806 by M'Mahon, but 

 these authors do not state to what extent such struc- 

 tures existed in America. In Doctor Hosack's bo- 

 tanic garden, 1801, extensive glasshouses were erected, 

 Compare Figs. 1749 and 1750. Fig. 1864 shows 

 one of the earUest American pictures of a greenhouse. 

 .It is copied, fuU size, from Squibb's "Gardener's 

 Calendar," Charleston, South Carolina, 1827. Fig. 



1864. Greenhouse front. 

 With glass lights and door of glass at the end, to be 7 feet high, 

 35 in length by 12 in breadth. Brick foundation 2 feet high, half 

 a foot of which to be underground. — Robert Squibb, "Gardener's 

 Calendar," Charleston, S. C. (1827). 



1865 shows the first greenhouse in Chicago, as illus- 

 trated in "American Florist." Note the small panes, 

 and the sash-construction. This was built in 1835 

 or 1836. With these pictures should be compared 

 the modern greenhouses as shown in Fig. 1866; also in 

 the pictures in the articles on Greenhouse. 



These early houses were heated by flues or ferment- 

 ing substances. The use of steam in closed circuits 

 began in England about 1820. Hot-water circulation 

 seems to have been a later invention, although it drove 

 out steam heating, until the latter began to regain its 

 supremacy in this country thirtj' to forty years ago. 

 The "New England Farmer" for June 1, 1831, contains 

 a description of hot-water heating for hothouses, a 

 matter then considered to be a great novelty. 



Most of the early houses had very httle, if any, glass 

 in the roof, and the sides were high. It was once a 

 practice to build living-rooms over the house, so that 

 the roof would not freeze. In the "modern" construc- 

 tion of the greenhouse of M'Mahon's day, 1806, he 

 advised that "one-third of the front side of the roof, 

 for the whole length of the house, be formed of glass- 

 work," and in order that the tall, perpendicular sides of 

 the house should have as "much glass as possible," he 

 said that "piers between the sashes are commonly made 

 of good timber, from 6 to 8 or 10 inches thick, accord- 

 ing to their height." "The width of the windows for 

 the glass sashes may be 5 or 6 feet; . . . the bottom 

 sashes must reach within a foot or 18 inches of the floor 

 of the house and their top reach within 8 or 10 inches of 

 the ceihng." The panes in the roof should be 6 inches 

 by 4, this size "being not only the strongest, but by 

 much the cheapest, and they should lap over each other 

 about 1/2 inch." But the sides or "front hghts must be 

 made with large panes of glass." Many or most of 

 the early plant-houses had removable tops, made of 

 sash. On the change from the old to the new ideas, 

 Alfred Henderson writes as follows: "The first pub- 

 hshed advocacy of the fixed-roof system was made 

 by Peter B. Mead, in the 'New York Horticulturist,' 

 in 1857. Before that, all greenhou.se structures for com- 

 mercial purposes were formed of portable sashes, and 

 nearly all were constructed as 'lean-tos,' with high 

 back walls, and none were connected. All were separate 



and detached, being placed at all angles, without plan 

 or system. Then, too, the heating was nearly all done 

 by horizontal smoke-flues, or manure fermenting, 

 although there was a crude attempt at heating by hot 

 water by some private individuals as early as 1833. 

 The first use of heating by hot water on anything hke a 

 large scale, however, was in 1839, when Hitchings & Co., 

 of this city, heated a large conservatory for Mr. William 

 Niblo, of New York; and yet for nearly twenty years 

 after this time heating by hot water was almost exclu- 

 sively confined to greenhouses and graperies on private 

 places, as few professional florists in those days could 

 afford to indulge in such luxuries. All this is changed 

 now. The use of steam, hot water under pressure, and 

 the gravity system of hot-water heating are almost uni- 

 versally in operation, the hot-air flue having been rele- 

 gated to the past. The best evidence of progress is in 

 the fact that the florist has not waited for the trades- 

 man, but has brought about these improvements 

 himself." 



Miieh attention was early given to the slope of the 

 roof, in order that the greatest amount of sunUght may 

 be secured. Early in the past century the curvilinear 

 roof came into use, as the various angles which it pre- 

 sents to the sun were supposed to catch the maximum 

 number of the incident rays. The sides of the house 

 remained high, for the most part, until near the middle 

 of the century. All this shows that the early glass- 

 house was modeled after the dwelhng or other buildings, 

 and that it had not developed into a structure in which 

 plants were grown for commercial purposes. 



The modern commercial forcing-house, with direct 

 roof, low sides, and heated by steam or hot water in 

 closed circuits, is mostly a development of the last forty 

 years. Its forerunner was the propagating-pit of the 

 nurseryman. If anything is lost in sunhght by adopting 

 a simple roof, the loss is more than compensated by the 

 lighter framework and larger glass. In the forcing- 

 house, all architectural ambition is sacrificed to the one 

 desire to create a commercial garden in the frosty 

 months. 



Lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, carnations, violets, 

 and various other plants are now grown as crops under 

 glass roofs, whereas a generation ago they were usually 

 not forced at all for market or were grown mostly under 

 frames. With the simplifying and cheapening of the 

 glasshouse, amateur flower- and vegetable-growing has 

 acquired a new impetus, and the business of the retail 

 florist has grown amazingly. 



Some idea of the increase of the demand for plants 

 may be obtained from the sale of flower-pots. A. H. 

 Hews, of Cambridge, Mass., whose ancestors began 

 the manufacture of pots before 1765, once reported that 

 for a period of twenty-two years, from 178S to 1810 the 

 accounts of the sales of pots "cover about as many pages 

 as we now often use in one day; and the amount in 



186S. First greenhouse in Chicago (1835 or 1836). 



dollars and cents does not compare with single sales of 

 the year 1894." He also compared the sales for 1869 and 

 1894 and "found the increase as ten to one; or, in round 

 numbers, 700,000 flower-pots in the former year and 

 7,000,000 in the latter; and if the same factory can in 

 1920, twenty-five years later, produce and .sell 70,000-, 

 000, we shall verily be living in a land of flowers." 



One of the earliest greenhouse builders was Frederic 

 A. Lord, who built his first houses, according to Taft, 



