John Claudius Loudon - father of the English garden - His development of hothouses

His development of hothouses

Loudon concentrated his attention after his first European tour on the development of hothouses. He had written about these as early as 1805 in A Short Treatise on Several Improvements Recently Made in Hothouses. He wanted to make them look beautiful in their own right, and so developed a wrought-iron sash-bar and half-bar in 1816 that could be bent in any direction without losing its strength. His ideas were published in his Remarks on the Construction of Hothouses in 1817 and the following year in A Comparative View of the Common and Curvilinear Modes of Roofing Hothouses.

These, and a pamphlet of sketches of experimental hothouses, must have influenced Joseph Paxton, who erected his great conservatory at Chatsworth between 1838 and 1840. Loudon’s method had been used earlier by W. & D. Bailey who had acquired the rights to the flexible glazing bar in 1818 to produce a greenhouse for Lord St. Vincent.

These developments in glasshouses, together with the introduction of exotic plants with long flowering periods ‘lay behind the fashion for bedding-out exotics …[and] they quickly became essential features of garden architecture’.[9]

Example of an early glasshouse at Bicton Park. Copyright Louise Wickham In 1823 Loudon designed his own ‘double detached villa’ with a domed conservatory and it was completed in the following year. This was the forerunner of the popular Victorian suburban villa, its garden a model for the gardens that were attached to such houses. The garden’s pathways curved around trees and shrubs, while at the back Loudon laid out experimental raised beds for the exotics.