New installation advice wanted.

[MartynPW]

Hello all.

Apologies if this has (no doubt...) been asked before.

We moved house last year from very rural East Yorkshire to an old farmhouse on the edge of Weardale in Durhamshire, and my next task is to get our 8x12 greenhouse up and running. It will be going in the back garden, which is north facing, and the only place it can realistically live is on a raised area of lawn, aligned north to south along the long axis with the door to the south. There’s a fairly high wall which will be to the west of the g/h, which will give shelter from the constant wind in the area.

As it’s a new installation, I have a reasonably “blank cheque” with regard how I do it, other than the location which I can’t change. Any thoughts on the base are most welcome, (sleepers, slabs, bare soil??), as are suggestions about orientation problems, what’s best to grow, etc. We have no fixed ideas about what to grow this year, the main intention is just to get the g/h built and fine tune it as we go along, probably making some bespoke wooden shelving when time permits.

Thanks in advance.

Martyn.

[nickdub]

I'd probably set the bottom on a low wall of say brick with bare soil inside for the borders, and if possible some material like gravel or crushed slate down the center to walk on. Being quite tall I prefer to get a bit of extra height by raising up the sides if I can.

I'd just add that I like where possible to put a rainwater butt outside and connect this to a header-tank inside for dip filling cans - to this end I'd bury a good length of garden hose first with one end inside and the other out, so that it was in place for later use.

One finally thing if there's any issue with grass or weeds on the site, it might be worth have some sort of cement apron round the edges of where the greenhouse is to be sited, as it can be a pain trying to weed up against a glass wall.

[burnie]

Welcome Martin, what are you planning on growing in the future, get it right now and this will reap dividends later.