New crystal palaces to teach of natural world

摘要

Public gardens are building glasshouses to combine the best in design with education and growing technology. These days, glasshouses in public gardens are expected to be much more than repositories of tender plants. They have a key role to play as a focus for education programmes and as a badge by which the gardens become known to the wider public. The RHS will mark its bicentenary by building a huge new glasshouse covering an area of 3,000sq m and rising 12m above a new lake in its Wisley garden. It will replace Wisley's existing glasshouses - built in the late 1960s and thought at the time to have a lifespan of just 15 years - and is due to open in mid-2007.