HARTLEY BOTANIC

Here at Hartley Botanic, we offer practical greenhouses & glasshouses with a worldwide reputation for perfect design, enduring strength, unparalleled quality and everlasting performance. Providing a beautiful range of greenhouses for the everyday gardener, from the smallest residential greenhouses, to the larger glasshouses, and large bespoke designs. Hartley Botanic works hard to cater to the needs of every individual gardener and every individual garden.

Since 1938 Hartley Botanic has been synonymous with innovation, style, excellence, unsurpassed performance and enduring structural strength which has famously stood the test of time and climate. With our much expanded range of superior aluminium glasshouses and particularly our bespoke service, we continue to serve discerning growers, Garden Designers, Landscape Architects and Horticultural Institutes.

I recently read, on a BBC webpage, that “Victorian society was transformed by engineering ingenuity and entrepreneurial prowess”.

When we think of the great British engineering pioneers, we often think of Isambard Kingdom Brunel who, in July 1839, laid the keel in Bristol for a 3,270 ton iron super ship. Designed for speed and comfort, this was to be the most revolutionary steamship of the early Victorian period and by no means a small task!

We might also think of the famous Sir Joseph Paxton who in 1851 designed the Crystal Palace, constructed in glass and cast iron for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.

Perhaps less famous by name, but not by contribution, were Richard Turner and Decimus Burton who in 1848 built the Palm House at Kew a most recognisable building, which has gained the iconic status as the world’s most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure. The technology was borrowed from shipbuilding and it can be seen that the design is essentially an upturned hull. The unprecedented use of light but strong wrought iron ‘ship’s beams’ made the great open span possible, allowing room for the unhindered growth of tall specimen palms.

In the realm of historical horticultural engineering, architecture and design, we may recall other names such as Lancelot “Capability” Brown, Thomas Messenger, Foster & Pearson, W. Richardson & Co, J C Loudon, John Kibble and Boucher & Couslandwho all made a variety of historical contributions.

In the 20th Century, Vincent Hartley (1904-1964) and later Eric Bradbury of Clear Span, both flamboyant inventors, “re-invented the wheel” by designing revolutionary glazing systems for residential and commercial greenhouses. But there, at its heart, remained the over-engineering values that the bygones had used and relied upon when shipbuilding and bridge building.

These principles are still very much in evidence in Hartley greenhouses today.

With the passage of time and technology, other improvements were made, such as use of marine quality stainless steel fixings, thermo plastic rubber to edge and separate the glass from metal and toughened safely glass for glazing. In fact Hartley Botanic was the first company in the United Kingdom to introduce toughened safely glass as an industry standard in all their greenhouses.