The Greenhouse Gardening Year
Plants for a hot greenhouse
If you want to grow the sort of tropical plants that usually flourish in the hot, humid parts of the southern USA, Central and South America and the West Indies, you need to keep your greenhouse at a minimum of 18°C (65°F) — more or less the temperature that most of us like to keep our homes over winter today. In the past, plants needing a steady temperature like this were grown in purpose-built ‘stove houses’, in hotbeds heated by hot-water pipes.
Planning displays
The parts of the world that experience temperatures above 18°C (65°F) all year round are mostly jungle- or rainforest environments, and if you are successful, your greenhouse will become a mini one of these.
Foliage plants
These should and will dominate. Choose some with huge leaves, for example the tree philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum) or Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa). Forget the sad specimens you might have seen struggling in a dark corner as house plants — in the warmth, they come into their own and are magnificent. Colored-leaved house plants, such as prayer plant (Maranta) and dumb cane (Dieffenbachia) will flourish too. Dumb cane is so called because the sap makes your tongue swell to gigantic proportions if ingested. The most widely available species is Die ffenbachia seguine, which has oblong to oval leaves in combinations of green and white or yellow, marbled, spotted, dotted and striped. Maranta leuconeura has blunt-ended, oval leaves with symmetrical markings in red or paler green; the leaves spread flat during the day and are raised vertically at night. Coleus (Solenostemon) are very colorful foliage plants in yellows, oranges, reds and purples. Usually grown as annuals, they will survive over winter in a hot house. This will allow you to select and keep the best from a sowing of seed, since they can be variable.
A stream winds its way through humid jungle in a re-creation of a rainforest at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
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