Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/11

Rh place the furnace under cover and in close proximity to a yard where the fuel is stored, the worst of the winter work will be greatly facilitated, and the owner’s purse will be saved. A furnace under cover will afford more heat for your consumption of fuel than one exposed to the wintry blast, and the gardener will not so much dread the task of stoking on a bitter winter night as he will be likely to do in the case where the glare of the fire and the blinding snow assail his eyes at the same time, and his fingers are frozen at the very moment that his face is flushed with looking into the disposition of the burning fuel.

In the construction of a plant house the first matter of importance is to determine the purpose to which it is to be applied. On this will depend the choice of site and aspect, the size of the house, and the extent to which embellishments are to be employed within and without. It will be well for those who study economy to remember that a very plain substantial house, thoroughly adapted for plant culture, will always look respectable, even if it is not decorated like a pavilion or pagoda; and its use will justify it far more satisfactorily than any amount of ornament. There are some grand conservatories in the land in which nothing of a vegetable nature except mildew will thrive, and not a few very humble greenhouses in which plants grow as if by magic, and provide their owners with an endless variety of priceless (though costless) pleasures. The idle man who does not intend to do much in the gardening way may be wise to build himself a roomy and thoroughly substantial conservatory, attached to or very near his dwelling, and furnish it with dracænas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions. An ambitious amateur may set his mind upon a block of houses for camellias, heaths, cacti, pelargoniums, and fifty other classes of plants. This one would do well to consult a garden architect, and determine from the first to do the thing well or not at all. But for every one who requires to be accommodated in a peculiar way there will be hundreds who want what is commonly understood as a greenhouse, and the question is. How are they to begin?

A good general advice to all such would be to erect for the present one good span-roofed house, running north and south, in a quite open sunny spot, and have it as large as the purse will allow for the whole thing to be done properly. A large body of air maintains an equable temperature with far less trouble of management than a small body, and hence in a burst of