Conservatories

History, buying guide, List of Famous Conservatories

Buying guide

PVCu, HARDWOOD or ALUMINIUM?

PVCu

excellent, highly insulate material which benefits from little or no external maintenance, readily available and tested and lowest cost option of all 3 materials. It is mainly seen in white but also available in Mahogany and Cherry Oak woodgrain styles. PVCu is by far most popular material for conservatories. For some, PVCu lacks authenticity when it comes to the more traditional designs. It is not acceptable to planners for use on listed buildings and not popular with planners in conservation areas.

HARDWOOD: truly traditional design with an authentic look. Any traditional design or feature can be recreated, incorporating contemporary benefit of double-glazing. "Perfect" material for listed buildings. Will require periodic maintenance, modern paint finishes and stains ensure that this is increasingly less of an issue. Available in a variety of stains (mahogany, light oak, etc.), as well as various painted finishes (white, cream, green and brown), for bespoke designs particularly, this will be the most expensive choice of material; but then again it will look very special.

ALUMINIUM

Features of material very similar to PVCu, although it is more expensive and not quite such a good insulator. It is a good choice for commercial locations and any situation where strength is a major issue. Note, that a lot of PVCu conservatories, although clad in PVCu, almost always use aluminium in the roof structure precisely for this reason.

the costs of a glass roof are much greater than those of polycarbonate.

Some conservatory companies call a Victorian design an Edwardian. Others will use names like Home Extender for a Lean To. The reasons vary - often it is marketing, and sometimes it even depends on where in the nation, or county you live in. The conservatory industry itself does not have a consistent approach.

The trick is to be as specific as one can be.

As with everything in life it is a good idea to make notes on what you really would like your conservatory to do before approaching a supplier.

History

The Romans used a transparent rock called mica that closely resembles glass to form crude conservatories, and during the Renaissance times timber sheds were built around delicate plants to protect them during cold winter months.

The development of conservatories is linked to advances in the manufacture of sheet glass over the last 250 years. The availability of good, distortion-free glass is taken for granted these days, but until the middle of the 18th century, glass for windows was spun as a thin disc about 4ft across. Panes were then cut from the outside edge, leaving the whirled centre of the disc to be sold off cheaply or thrown away; sometimes to be retrieved for installation in the doors and windows of alehouses!

The 19th century stands as a golden age of conservatory building. Industrial advances together with the love of gardening produced an interest in exotic gardens under glass not only in high society but among the middle class as well. The social climate was changing and wealth flowing from the Industrial Revolution was becoming increasingly used for luxury by those with wealth. The newly affluent built villas on small patches of land and attached conservatories to them as symbols of their newly achieved status in the contemporary social order. The inventive state of art engineering, architectural novelty and sheer grandeur they showcased can serve as inspiration in an era similarly devoted to the development of mass-production building technology yet starved for the engaging, detail-rich architectural forms of our past.

Initial designs favoured brick or stone structures with wide glazed areas between columns and a solid roof. Cast iron, allied to ever cheaper rolled glass, allowed architects to design increasingly delicate buildings where glass was the predominant material. This trend culminated in the Crystal Palace designed to house the 1851 Exhibition. This was the first major example of modular construction with its cast iron columns and framework being assembled in less than a year.

The success of the Crystal Palace led to an outpouring to standardized of the conservatory for the Victorian middle class, which became ever more ornate as tastes changed, providing an apt setting for formal tea parties and lovers' trysts well into the Edwardian period.

By the early part of the 20th century, the fascination with conservatories began to fade. The austerity of the war years and the Great Depression left little in the way of funds or free time for the enjoyment of indoor gardens and the great glass houses of the day were left abandoned in disrepair or destroyed as superfluous icons of a glamorous age gone by. The costs of building and maintaining great expanses of glass became prohibitive while interest in the classical architectural idioms gave way to modernist views of sheer concrete, glass and steel devoid of their familiar and fanciful details. Over the next decades, the archetypical “old-world” conservatory virtually disappeared from the built landscape.

It was not until the early 70s new developments in materials such as an introduction of float glass and construction techniques, including an emergence of sealed double glazing, made conservatories a practical proposition again.

Now energy efficiency is key in the development of the industry.

In 2005 plans for new rules on building conservatories as part of a drive to make homes use less fuel have been watered down, say the Lib Dems.
Lib Dem energy spokesman Sir Robert Smith asked ministers about the change in the House of Commons in 2005. Sir Robert said the government missed a chance to cut both greenhouse gas emissions and home heating bills. Ministers said the measures would save the equivalent of emissions from more than one million semi-detached homes. The original plans said conservatories should all be built with high efficiency glass and any home extensions had to improve the energy efficiency of the whole house. But the final rules cover only conservatories which are bigger than 30 square metres and extensions which are bigger than 1,000 square metres.

List of Famous Conservatories

Australia
Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne

The Fitzroy Gardens are 26 hectares (64 acres) located on the southeastern edge of the Melbourne Central Business District in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The gardens are bounded by Clarendon Street, Albert Street, Lansdowne Street, and Wellington Parade with the Treasury Gardens across Lansdowne street to the west.

The gardens are one of the major Victorian era landscaped gardens in Australia and add to Melbourne's claim to being the garden city of Australia. Set within the gardens are: an ornamental lake, kiosk and cafe, Conservatory, Cook's Cottage - a house where James Cook reputedly spent some years of his childhood (the cottage was in England at that time), Sinclair’s Cottage, Fountains and sculptures, Band Pavilion, the Rotunda and the fairy tree

United Kingdom

England
Kew Gardens (London)

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually referred to simply as Kew Gardens, are extensive gardens and botanical glasshouses between Richmond upon Thames and Kew in southwest London, England.

West Park's Conservatory was built in 1896, ad is a Grade II listed building.

Chatsworth House (Derbyshire)

Chatsworth House is a large country house 3½ miles north of Bakewell in Derbyshire, England, originally built by Bess of Hardwick. The Great Conservatory in the garden at Chatsworth was demolished as it needed ten men to run it and huge quantities of coal to heat it. All the plants had died during the war when no coal had been available for non-essential purposes. There was also talk of pulling down the 6th Duke's north wing, then regarded as having no aesthetic or historical value, to reduce running costs, but nothing came of it. Chiswick House, the celebrated Palladian villa in the suburbs of West London which the Devonshires had inherited when the 4th Duke had married Lord Burlington's daughter was sold to Brentford Council in 1929.

Scotland
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois is one of the largest and most impressive conservatories in the United States. Often referred to as "landscape art under glass," the Garfield Park Conservatory occupies approximately 4.5 acres (18,000 m²) inside and out, and includes cold frames and propagating where thousands of plants are grown each year for displays in Chicago parks and public spaces. The first 40 acre (160,000 m²) segment of Garfield Park was formally opened to the public in August of 1874. Originally known as Central Park, it was conceived as the centerpiece of the West Park System. In the late 19th century, each of the three large Westside parks had its own small conservatory and propagation greenhouses. After 20 years of use, these conservatories fell into a state of disrepair and became obsolete. Today the Conservatory still follows the original tenets of Jensen. One of the most popular rooms is the first presented to visitors, the Palm Room. In it over 7 dozen (84) different varieties of Palm Trees can be found from the over 2,700 known to exist today. Of particular importance is the Double Coconut Palm first grown by employees of the Conservatory in 1959. The Double Coconut Palm is only found off the coast of South Africa in its native environment and produces what is believed to be the largest seed of any plant in the world weighing up to 50 pounds (25kg).

The Lincoln Park Conservatory (1.2 ha / 3 acres) is a conservatory and botanical garden located at 2391 North Stockton Drive, next to the Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago, Illinois. It is open daily; admission is free.

The Lincoln Park Commission first established a greenhouse in 1877 and planted an adjacent formal garden in 1880. Today's conservatory was built in stages from 1890-1895, to designs by Joseph Lyman Silsbee and M. E. Bell, and consists of four halls:

Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory (Mitchell Park Domes or The Domes) is a conservatory located at Mitchell Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.. It is owned and operated by the Milwaukee County Park System, and replaced the original Milwaukee Conservatory which stood from 1898 to 1955. The three domes display a large variety of plant life. The Conservatory is composed of three beehive-shaped glass domes that span 140 feet in diameter and are 85 feet high. Each of the domes covers 15,000 square feet of display area and were constructed in stages from 1959 to 1967 at a cost of $4.5 million. This approach eliminated the need to bond construction costs and the facilities were able to open debt free.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in St. Louis, Missouri.

Founded in 1859, the Garden is one of the oldest botanical institutions in the United States and a National Historic Landmark. The Garden is a center for botanical research and science education of international repute, as well as an oasis in the city of St. Louis, with 31 ha (79 acres) of horticultural display.
Every year the Garden is a place for many cultural festivals including the Japanese Festival and the Chinese Festival. During this time, there are showcases of the culture's botanics as well as cultural arts, crafts, music and food. The Garden is known for its Bonsai growing, which can be seen all year round, but is highlighted during the multiple Asian festivals.

Conservatory of Flowers (San Francisco)

The Conservatory of Flowers is a large botanical greenhouse in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. Many exotic flowers from around the world are grown there for study and display. The conservatory describes itself as is the oldest existing conservatory in the Western Hemisphere. In May of 2005, a corpse flower species Amorphophallus titanum bloomed within the which attracted more than 16,000 visitors. The Conservatory also welcomed it's 500,000th visitor since reopening.

Krohn Conservatory (Cincinnati)

A conservatory located in Eden Park at 1501 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio. The conservatory was completed in 1933, and named in honor of Irwin M. Krohn who served on the Board of Park Commissioners. It now contains more than 3,500 plant species from all over the world, with principal collections: Bonsai Collection : a collection of bonsai trees from the conservatory itself, the Bonsai Society of Greater Cincinnati, and private individuals.; Desert Garden: succulents and cacti including agaves, aloes, crassulas, and yuccas, as well as cereus, opuntia, and pereskia; Floral Display : home to six seasonal floral shows, with a permanent citrus tree collection of orange, kumquat, giant Ponderosa lemon, and grapefruit; Orchid Display: approximately 75 blooming orchids any time, from a conservatory's collection of thousands of orchids encompassing 17 genera. This display also includes a Monstera deliciosa; Palm House: a 45-foot high central house with palm trees, rubber trees, and bananas, shrubby plants, and ground cover, as well as a 20-foot waterfall with a goldfish stream. Epiphytic bromeliads, orchids, and ferns grow in many of the trees; Tropical House: large variety of ferns, both terrestrial and epiphytic; cycad, bromeliad, and begonia collections; and important economic plants including a Cacao tree, Pomegranate, vanilla vine, and dwarf banana.

Moody Gardens (Galveston) a tourist complex in Galveston, Texas. It is owned, through a complex agreement, by the City of Galveston but funded, operated, and supported by the billion dollar Moody Foundation. Moody Gardens features three main pyramid attractions: the Aquarium, which is one of the largest in the world and holds many species of fish and other sealife; the Rainforest Pyramid, which contains tropical fauna and flora; and the Discovery Pyramid, which focuses on science-oriented exhibits and activities. Another major attraction is Palm Beach, a landscaped sandy area with freshwater lagoons and offering children's activities. Moody Gardens also has a RideFilm Theater with motion-based pod seating, a 3-D IMAX theater, a paddlewheel cruise boat, a hotel and a convention center.

Franklin Park Conservatory (Columbus, Ohio)

A botanical garden and conservatory located at 1777 East Broad Street, in Columbus, Ohio. It is open daily except Monday and holidays; an admission fee is charged. Originally built in 1895, Franklin Park Conservatory is on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it is a horticultural and educational institution showcasing exotic plant collections, special exhibitions, and Dale Chihuly artworks.

The conservatory contains more than 400 plant species. Collections include: Himalayan Mountains, Tropical Rainforest, Desert, Succulent Patio, Bonsai Courtyard, Pacific Island Water Garden, Showhouse with orchid and tropical bonsai collections, and Palm House with more than 40 species of palms. The conservatory is set within Franklin Park, and surrounded by 90 acres of outdoor botanical gardens and green space. In 2006, Franklin Park Conservatory has an operating budget of more than USA$4 million, a staff of 75 and more than 250 volunteers. The facility offers a wide range of educational classes for school groups, families, and individuals of all ages. Its extensive plant collections and special exhibitions provide hands-on learning opportunities about the natural world, gardening, and the arts.

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