Dress up Your Greenhouse

A greenhouse filled with flowering plants, the atmosphere pleasant with the scent of green growth and fragrant bloom, is always attractive. But there are some easy ways to make it even prettier, and if you plan to use part of it as an extension of your living room, perhaps as a dining area or just a place with chairs where you can rest occasionally, you will treat that section in a special way.

The hobby greenhouse of today is a far cry from its prototype, the old-fashioned stove house which was used mainly to winter-over tender decorative plants or to grow tropical citrus and other fruits. Now, a greenhouse makes possible not only a colorful year-round garden but it may be a means to health and an escape from the turmoil of business; it may become a family-room or a place for entertaining . . . and always for fun. No longer a luxury but a possibility for most home owners, the modern greenhouse serves your own particular purpose.

Dressing up The Outside

The structure itself is more attractive if it appears to be a part of your home instead of an afterthought. This is true particularly of lean-to greenhouses, which are so inviting when they have the look of an extra room. And if these are lighted at night, how lovely the flowers look from within and from without. Greenhouse foundations of concrete or other solid material can be painted to match your house, roll-up shades of wood can be treated in the same manner. When you shade your greenhouse from the sun, shade it with the light-green flexible plastic film suggested in Chapter 3 instead of with streaked, painted-on shading compound. The outside area around the greenhouse can be landscaped or planted with low evergreen shrubs or flowering plants.

Decorating The Functional Greenhouse

If your garden under glass is mainly functional, that is, a place only for the growing of plants, it can still be a picture if several attractive hanging baskets planted with colorful plants-lavender and yellow lantanas or shocking-pink ivy-leaved geraniums, perhaps-are nicely spaced and suspended from the roof bar. For baskets you might select trailing foliage plants: big chlorophytums; a collection of ivies with large or small green or variegated leaves; a collection of peperomias; maybe geranium species, like sprawling peppermint-scented Pelargonium tomentosum, that fill the greenhouse with tantalizing herbal aromas when the sun shines on them. A well-grown basket plant attracts the eye every time.

On glass shelves, pots of trailing plants soften the rigid lines of greenhouse structure and straight benches. Here is a place for wax-plants, trailers like Begonia 'Limminghei', and gesneriads such as hypocyrtas and columneas that bloom and bloom. On shelves, you can place interesting ceramic containers in colors that will not compete with plants. In these, dish gardens can be arranged to be brought into the house for occasional decoration there. A shelf is also a good place to show off pots of brilliant blue lobelia or pink or white clouds of baby's-breath, or cascades of bright yellow, salmon, orange, and red nasturtiums.

Perhaps it is imaginative planting of the edges of the benches that does the most to make the functional greenhouse attractive. In long lines, trailing white and lavender sweet-alyssum blooms throughout the year if it is sheared back now and then, or miniature ivies are permanently green and graceful. If you grow mostly potted plants, spread pebbles over the benches instead of soil; the white ones, sometimes called roofing pebbles, look best.

The house wall of a lean-to greenhouse has infinite possibilities for growing plants decoratively. Here you can attach tiers of metal trays from ridge to ground, to hold plants that form a living wall of greenery. I have seen them filled with asparagus fern (Asparagus Sprengeri), always a riotous grower. Here, too, is a place for handsomely designed wrought-iron brackets to hold one or many trailing plants, and there are brass plaques, ceramic figures, and lavaboes to fasten among the trailing plants.

To minimize the utilitarian appearance of the dirt floor of a greenhouse, make a walk of brick, perhaps laid in an interesting pattern, with no cement of course, but on a 3- to 4-inch layer of clean, washed, gravel-free sand. Or use evenly cut and evenly spaced pieces of flagstones, also laid on sand. A slat walk of natural wood that has been treated with a preservative looks well and keeps your feet dry; you can let it weather naturally or cover it with gray or green deck paint instead of the preservative.

A small pool, fountain, or waterfall with recirculating water adds a great deal of interest to a greenhouse, furnishes some air moisture, and provides a place to grow a few of the beautiful plants that grow only in water.

Greenhouse Living Room

The lean-to greenhouse attached to living- or dining-room, study, kitchen, or bedroom, and planned for living like other rooms in the house as well as for the cultivation of plants, can be made more attractive by a certain amount of concealment. If you have standard benches on either side or plan to use the center area or one end of the greenhouse for a family area, hide the under-bench storage of soil and pots with louvered shutters or plywood panels. Or install curtain rods along the top of the bench and hang plastic or bamboo curtains that can be pushed aside for access to your supplies. You might build cabinets instead of benches and top these with waterproof trays filled with pebbles to accommodate pots of your favorite plants and bulbs. Cover the floor in this area with slate or vinyl; furnish with a comfortable chair or two, or perhaps a small table and chairs to make a flowery dining area. Fluorescent lights or decorative hanging lamps will make your plant room as delightful by night as by day.

A large free-standing greenhouse can be a delightful garden or game room that can be decorated like any other room except that consideration must always be given to the effects of humidity and condensation that are inevitable in a large glassed-in area. Select draperies and furniture coverings that are moistureproof or can be made so. Probably you won't want wallpaper anywhere, but even that can be made highly moisture-resistant, as can paint surfaces. Cover the floor with vinyl patterned with big black and white squares most practical and attractive.

A new indoor-outdoor carpeting made of a synthetic fiber is ideal for a greenhouse used partly for gardening and partly for living. This remarkable new carpeting is impervious to all seasons and all weather, heavy traffic, rot, mildew; it does not shrink, stretch, fade or discolor, can be washed down with a hose, and is available in several colors.