With so many of us working from home and keen to grow our own, there could hardly be a better time to consider buying a greenhouse. Some of us want a place to sow seeds, take cuttings and propagate plants, always ending up with more than we need. Overwintering tender plants, protecting delicate treasures and producing unseasonal fruits and vegetables are also items high on the list. Best of all, however, a greenhouse is somewhere to be when there’s a chill in the air, a place to potter about in, deadheading the pelargoniums, checking for signs of life in pots of bulbs. Or sitting down (yes, every greenhouse should have a seat), browsing a seed catalogue and listening to the radio, but mostly simply gazing out into the garden and dreaming of more clement times.
A greenhouse cannot be an impulse buy and there are some important things to consider before making your final choice.
Siting the greenhouse
Maximising light levels inside your greenhouse is important, so try to site it away from the shade of buildings and trees. When deciding about the position, remember that the sun moves and a place that is sunny in July may be overshadowed by nearby buildings and trees in the winter.
If possible, position the greenhouse so that its ridge runs north to south. That way, it will receive the best light in the morning and in the evening, which is when it is most needed, and will escape the full midday heat in high summer.
Materials
Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
