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Our greenhouse has been a work in progress for
several years. It started out as a longing for an old fashioned flower
pit, somewhere to overwinter my ferns and a few choice plants. Basically,
a flower pit is a rectangular pit dug into the earth, then covered with
recycled windows or a sheet of translucent plastic. After the pit was
excavated, the flower pit idea slowly evolved into a much more elaborate
and aesthetically pleasing
structure.
We wanted to use as much recycled material as
possible, so when my mother in law was having her house remodeled, and we
salvaged the sliding glass doors. (thanks, Ruth!) My husband, Kevin, reinforced the clay walls of
the pit with plywood, and then built trusses to support the heavy glass
panels.
We removed the aluminum that was encasing the glass panels,
and placed the panels in the awaiting supports and caulked around them
with a silicone material to seal them. Kevin had some strips of copper
fabricated to place over the seams both to camouflage and further
weatherproof them. Later, we went to a salvage yard
and bought two windows and a small 4 pane glass door, and Kevin framed out
the ends to accommodate them.
We have the greenhouse situated under a deciduous
tree, so in the wintertime it receives sun, but is shady and cooler in the
summer when the tree's leaves have emerged. We used some salvaged bridge timbers
to build a retaining wall and some wide steps leading down to the gravel
entry. Kevin dug a deeper trench in the floor and put in extra gravel
(this is known as a dry well) so
that the greenhouse entry would drain well during periods of heavy rain.
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