We are heading into our sixth year with our Rhino greenhouse. Season after season, it’s remained a sanctuary of calm and positivity for me - a space for activity, stillness, reflection, and planning of all kinds. Should you need it, it’s a place to escape the busy day-to-day goings-on, escape the wireless coverage, and evade the phone reception. It’s a space to connect with nature and reconnect with ourselves through the simple act of sowing seeds, nurturing fragile seedlings, and tending established plants. It’s a place to give, not take - but with enough giving, it will reward you time and time again.
Watching the shifting seasons from this little glass house never gets boring. Unlike a house with solid walls, this one gives me unfettered access to the world around me. I have a front-row seat - and nature’s premiering. I get to notice details I simply wouldn’t if I weren’t out in the greenhouse. Right now, it’s autumn, and the drama of change is evident. Leaves fall slowly from the trees above - steady at first, then, after a gale, great tawny drifts build around the edges of the veg garden. The lawn becomes a patchwork of species: oak, ash, maple, beech.
As the leaves fall, the bare frames of the trees begin to reveal themselves, opening up the dense woods to the sea below. Now, from the shelter of the greenhouse, I can look down through the canopy to the bay - whereas in summer, I cannot. The sun dances off the sea and reflects light towards me. It’s wonderful to witness this change, and how the landscape realigns itself to the coming winter.
In some ways, a greenhouse might appear fragile - a collection of thin glass panes stitched together in a fine frame. Vulnerable, perhaps, to the elements, to the battering storms, to the pounding it takes from the coastal winds and the driving rain that rolls in off the ocean over the winter months. Happily, though, our Rhino is robust, strong, and stands defiant in the face of squalls and gusts. Like a well-built ship, it holds a steady course and keeps its crew of young plants safe and secure until the seas abate and the sun comes back out from behind the clouds.
Once I’ve ticked off my winterizing checklist - which includes giving the greenhouse its annual clean-down - spending an hour or two in the veg garden each week is all I must set aside to keep on top of the various jobs that need doing. Some occasional weeding, fixing loose fencing, rehanging the garden gate, turning the compost, mulching the trees, topping up the beds - and this year, for the first time, replacing one or two of the oak sleepers that have softened in parts. It’s interesting how time takes its toll on the garden. The posts, the compost bays, the raised beds - they’ve all weathered and weakened over the years. It’s a fact of life: nothing seems to last forever - except, perhaps, my Rhino!
Recipe by Gill Meller
Videography by Matt Austin