Making Veddw Garden 19: The Conservatories

We loved that our new house had a conservatory.

It looked like this:

Grubby.

There was no electricity to it. And, sadly, it leaked. We managed at some point to add power, but the drips continued despite years of attempting to thwart them. Buckets were useful.

We did use it, rather squashed up, as a dining room, and in fact Charles proposed to me there. In front of a New Year’s Eve party of friends, just to embarrass me into agreeing…

It clearly wasn’t this time, since that looks too Christmasy.. I do believe that no-one took a picture when we got engaged. Different, phone-less times.

 

And we painted it –

I wanna see it painted
Painted black
Black as night
Black as coal

If you’re my age you’ll recognise that. We painted the whole house black, to help it (it being ugly) vanish a little.

But mostly we used the conservatory as a sort of ornamental greenhouse. As that, it was not bad, really.

 

 

You’ll understand the predominance of succulents if you’ve read this.

People always admire the droop….

I loved the arched window detail.

BUT one day Charles told me he thought we could have a new and bigger and leak free conservatory.

That was partly because of wonderful funding, and partly about how to make it bigger. Leakproof – that was simply hope. But to cut a long story shorter we had the old one demolished and got a brand new one.

There was DUST! And the demolition exposed the original cottage to a suddenly clear view:

We never discovered what those columns had been for.

The new version was a little bigger, which felt like a lot.

The line in the floor marks where the old conservatory came to.

By this time we were a bit skint, but I discovered a great way to make the shelving we needed for plants. The internet provided us with rods and bolts and we bought some planks:

Such a great idea that we did the same outside on the Terrace:

And the new conservatory feels much more like a sitting room than a greenhouse.

We painted it orange as well as black.

Gloriously we can open the doors and feel that we’re outside when we’re in, keeping warm and dry.

Looking the other way:

Anyway – we are mega lucky to have this. I do try to be useful here, so what have we learnt?

Don’t think a new conservatory will mean you get rid of red spider mite. Somehow the blighters managed to survive the transition and re-emerged to feast on my overwintering Anisodontea ‘El Rayo’. Which is a crying shame because otherwise that glorious plant flowers all winter.

And if you grow succulents in order to avoid mighty red spider, you may find you add mealy bugs to your menagerie. Sigh. I manage them using a tiny spray of Isopropyl Alcohol. It’s like weeding: you don’t ever get rid of them, but you can keep your plants alive this way. And it’s kind of easy and a little satisfying.

Beware of the glass in new builds of all kinds. ChatGPT (AI) tells me:

Modern conservatories often use UV-protective or low-emissivity (low-e) glass to reduce heat gain, protect furniture from fading, and improve energy efficiency. However, this glass filters out part of the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, which may impact plant growth.

That will also reduce the infrared light you’ll be able to receive when you’re in the conservatory (or house, or greenhouse). That’s not good for you, and it’s a crying shame that the world is still cheerfully oblivious to the cost of losing exposure to infra red light. Both those topics are too big a story for this post. But if you research all that, my post will have been useful.

Charles:

The old conservatory was made by Amdega – a very prestigious brand- so it was especially disappointing that it didn’t last very long (the previous owners had it built). Amdega were no help. We went as far as having replacement skylights made and installed but it still leaked. A little word of thanks is due to my friend Bob who encouraged me to spend some of a windfall on replacing it. Best house decision we ever made.  As Anne says, it gave us an extra living room which Anne has made beautiful.

Charles has been known to tell people that we plant up the conservatory with alchemilla and geraniums….