Raise a glass
FTER 18 months of renovation and a fundraising hustle to pay the £3.2 million bill, the Chelsea Physic Garden’s glasshouses (), home to more than 1,200 species of plants (including 150 new ones), are now open. ‘The glasshouses date to the early 1900s and had been in use for more than 100 years,’ says commercial director Danielle Sargent. ‘The constant usage has meant that their restoration and repair was inevitable—wood had rotted, the glass had cracked, and the metal had rusted.’ Eight structures were repaired, including the Cool Fernery, where ferns are misted with rainwater collected by a water-harvesting tank, and the Pit House, a sunken den, submerged in the earth to protect sensitive plants from rapid swings in temperature. In the latter, the danger of moving the plants—including species such as, from the Namib desert, which can live for thousands of years—meant that they needed to stay in place as the glasshouse was repaired around them, pane by individual pane.
