Designing the Garden Greenhouse

By: Bonnie Christine

Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 4

I've always wanted a greenhouse. Years before there was a frame or a pane, there was a promise I'd made to myself: "When I finish building the Surface Design Immersion course, I will give myself a place to grow."

I started hunting on Facebook Marketplace, and I found a jumble of century-old bricks, the kind with softened edges and stories baked into them. My husband, David, and I filled his truck, hauled them home, and I laid them out one by one in a herringbone pattern. The work was slow and honest. Every brick felt like a record of effort, a tangible reward. That floor is still my favorite part of the whole house because it reminds me of what the greenhouse is built on: intention, small steps, consistency, and joy.

The structure itself is simple: ten by twelve feet, a single door that swings wide, all sun and no power. The greenhouse sits about two hundred yards below our house at the end of the fenced garden where eight four-by-eight-foot raised beds stand in steady rows, with a long run of blackberry vines and a pair of picnic tables for sunlit suppers. 

"It’s a studio inside a garden and a garden inside a studio, an expansion of season and a gentle kind of exposure, too."

 

What I love most about this house of glass is how it turns me into a better student. The greenhouse keeps me close to the questions that matter: What is this shape trying to say? Where does the color shift when the light tilts? How does the bloom hold itself when it’s nearly done? 

When I’m working on a pattern, I feel the answers in my hands because I’ve held the source. Seeds become stories here, and stories become patterned prints. 

Wanting More?

Read the full story in Volume 4 of Pattern Magazine.

The complete greenhouse feature (with more photos, the full tour, and everything in between) is in the latest issue.

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