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The Potting Shed (17)
Transcript
Mina loved flowers. One of her favorite flowers was the rose. According to gardener Tom Holstrom, she used to have roses in all the guests’ rooms. Mina had the present greenhouse and potting shed built in about 1909 on the original site of Henry Pedder’s greenhouses. The potting shed is considered the concrete building that houses space for storing plants and equipment, bulbs during the winter, space to pot or repot plants, and on the second floor a space for the head gardener to live. Sometimes this part of the building is referred to as the Gardner’s Cottage. Attached to the Potting Shed are the greenhouses. The greenhouses were divided into sections. There was a palm room with many tropical plants for use in the conservatory, the orchid room, a rose room, cut flower beds and a propagating room. According to gardener Tom Holstrom, the orchids were moved into the conservatory for display when they were in bloom. The rose room was for cut flowers to be used throughout the house and the flower beds generally had carnations and snap dragons also for use in the house. Today large agave live in this room. Most of these cacti are direct descendants of the plants that the Edison’s grew. Frequently the large agaves, which were in pots in the conservatory in Edison’s time, were moved out on to the front lawn of the home. As you walk around the greenhouse, you’ll notice several foundations. The sections attached to the greenhouse, now wrapped in netting to keep the deer out, was once a greenhouse. It was taken down in the early 1950’s because it was falling apart. The small portion remaining was used, and still is used, as propagating plants. The other foundations that you see are what remains of the original Pedder greenhouses. The Edison’s converted these foundations into pole frames.
Description
What exactly is a potting shed? Why is it connected to the Greenhouse? Learn more about this set of buildings here.
Credit
NPS
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