Greenhouse history - Romans to the Eden Project

The Romans were the first civilization to create a transferable structure to give plants protection from the elements. They learned from oriental gardeners to build heated pits covered with translucent slabs of rock which were the precursor of the greenhouses we use today. The Romans, however, used them as forcing houses to bring on trees in pots to ripen the fruit. These greenhouses were called specularia. They also built wheeled barrows covered with oiled cloth to keep rain out but allow sun through, and these were moved around the gardens to follow the sun. They held cucumber and other soft vegetables.

The first modern greenhouses were built in Italy to house the exotic plants that explorers were bringing back from the tropics and this concept soon spread to Holland and then England, along with the plants. They were expensive to run and required a huge workforce as they had to be closed up at night. There were also substantial problems with providing adequate and balanced heat and in several cases under gardeners were gassed to death by the fumes given off by coal or oil filled stoves that they were meant to keep stoked overnight.

By 1840, people discovered that a curved roof offered greater concentration of sunlight and that using cast-iron rather than wood, allowed for larger glassed areas to be constructed without damaging the strength of the building.

In 1842, Paxton constructed the famous Palm House greenhouse at Kew Gardens. His building was the larges in the world at the time, measuring 110 metres by 30 metres wide and 20 metres high.

Recently, major advancements in greenhouse technology, materials, and design have led to the development of geodesic domes like the Eden Project, which house whole ecosystems in controlled conditions.