Lovely Greenhouses offers excitement at any time, but nothing equals the thrill of your first "winter garden." Even the most familiar plants take on new beauty under glass. A favorite geranium is no longer just a geranium, but a brilliant splash of crimson on a gray winter day a lift to the spirits of a shut-in, a brighter table for your holiday entertaining.

If this is your first experience with growing plants, you will know a certain kind of wonder seeds like specks of dust grow into spikes of lemon yellow, pink, and white snapdragons, shriveled beads produce nasturtiums in myriad colors, gold through mahogany. From tangled straw colored aerial roots come 3 to 4 foot stems supporting miniature orchids in vivid orange, and these will open continuously for many months. From lumpy tubers will emerge velvet-textured gloxinias, the stiff and shiny flowers of anthodium’s will look more lacquered than real. Each new type of growth seems more amazing than what went before, each effort more rewarding. After years of under glass gardening, the first December blossoms are still exciting; in a greenhouse you never become insensitive to beauty, you are never a seasoned veteran. Indeed, there is no end to the possibilities of enjoyment and no surer way to good health. Go into your greenhouse with a headache, and you come out humming a tune. Take in a problem and it will be solved as you work with your plants.

If you have gardened out of doors, you know something of this wonder and pleasure, but in your garden under glass you will find that plants are even more fun, for in a greenhouse you are close to every process of growth, and the contrast with the outside world in its long winter pause is striking indeed. And there is another advantage. In some seasons, outdoor gardens prove more frustrating than delightful. After you have cultivated, fertilized, watered, and sprayed, months of debilitating drought may occur, or a single rain storm may wreak havoc with your choicest blooms.