The year-round greenhouse

A greenhouse is a real asset in a garden. It can be a beautiful building, for one thing: when the sun glints off the glass of a white-painted greenhouse filled with vibrantly colourful plants it'll always make you smile.

But it's also a wonderful way to expand your gardening beyond all recognition. In our garden centre in Bridport you'll find an Aladdin's cave of possibilities for your greenhouse, whether you want orchids, tender nerines and pelargoniums in day-glo colours, or tomatoes and cucumbers for warm fruit picked straight off the vine.

In fact, there's no reason you can't have something special in your greenhouse in every month of the year. Use our handy guide to make the most of your garden's best asset.

Spring
Greenhouses are great for forcing plants into performing early, whether it's spring bulbs for a late winter display, or strawberries for a crop a couple of months ahead. And once you start sowing seeds in a greenhouse, you'll quickly be bursting at the seams and wondering how you ever managed without one.

Summer
Glasshouses pump out the produce through summer as the extra heat allows you to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, chilli peppers and aubergines. Feed weekly to keep the crops coming and water at least once a day – automatic watering systems, available in our garden centre, ease the workload.

Autumn
As the last of the summer crops go over, replace them with salads to keep the greenhouse supplying you generously through the months to come. Plant plug plants of lettuce, baby-leaf salads and winter spinach straight into the greenhouse border where they'll grow slowly till spring.

Winter
You'll find a range of greenhouse heaters in our garden centre to keep your glasshouse frost-free through the coldest months of the year, so you can keep tropical plants like aeoniums and bananas going from one year to the next. Tender herbs like lemongrass, French tarragon or stevia suddenly become possible, too, when you can bring them under cover for winter.

Please ask the staff in our Bridport garden centre for more information and advice about making good use of your greenhouse all year round.