Greenhouse Effect
By Diane Daniel
First published in the Boston Globe Magazine, June 2, 2002

In the recent Hollywood remake of The Time Machine, a film about a Victorian Englishman who travels to the future, the main character conducts his experiments in an 1890s greenhouse, which doubles as his laboratory. Most people probably won’t notice the details of the structure, which is made to look old and shabby, but Concord resident Mark Ward, who supplied about 160 pounds of parts to the DreamWorks production team that built the structure and served as a consultant to the set designer, will scrutinize every detail.

The parts for that greenhouse have since been returned to Ward, to be stashed in one of the many storage spaces he rents around Concord to hold materials and supplies. "Some of the stuff I’ve had for 25 years," he says.

For more than two decades, Ward, 50, has been known nationally as an authority on antique greenhouses. He both restores vintage greenhouses and builds new ones using old materials. He has disassembled greenhouses all over New England, some as large as 15,000 square feet. He also has a collection of Lord & Burnham greenhouse catalogs from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, which are full of building plans for many of the greenhouses he’s taken down. Ward gets a kick out of the catalogs’ advertisements, which equate greenhouse ownership with a well-appointed lifestyle.

Ward, who is single, lives near Concord Center in a condominium carved out of an 1839 farmhouse. Inside, he grows only a few plants, but his potted ivy stretches across several windows and ceilings. His furniture is hand-me-downs or picked from the trash. Ward is definitely a believer in trash as treasure and thanks salvage for many of his holdings, such as the pieces of old wood he pulls from a cardboard box to show off their classy curves. There’s a piece of cypress about which he marvels: "To have this joint took like that after about 75 years is amazing. You can still see the saw marks. It’s because of the materials."

Ward got into the business in 1975, when he was involved with a group of Boston artists who wanted to build a community greenhouse. He dismantled an old greenhouse for parts, and then, "when the project fell apart, I had a big pile of stuff at my parents’ in Lexington." He began selling the parts off, and a buyer persuaded Ward to re-erect the structure as well.

"I figured if I had taken it apart, I could put it together," says Ward, who learned building basics from his father, an engineer. Since that first greenhouse, "which was slightly askew, though no one else would notice," Ward estimates he has built about five a year, many of them in suburbs west of Boston. He’s also sold materials for about 150 greenhouses that others have built.

One example of his work is in Carlisle, where Ward and the owners worked together on the design and construction of a 9-by-14-foot greenhouse that was added to the back of a house, where it was fitted against an adjoining stone wall. Building materials included reconditioned cold-frame sashes dating to the 1890s and salvaged from the Hunnewell Estate in Wellesley. The greenhouse features lapped, or shingled, 1890s single-pane glass and a modern venting system.

In nearby Lincoln, Ward built a 25-by-16-foot two-story greenhouse at Lindentree Farm, a community-supported farm run by Ari Kurtz and family. The single-pane, steel- and cypress-framed greenhouse attached to a barn serves as a growing space downstairs and a sun deck upstairs. The deck, made from an old Jamaica Plain fire escape, lets sunlight filter downstairs. The upstairs sliding doors leading to the farm’s office in the barn are kept open, and the warmth from the greenhouse heats the entire barn. Much of the greenhouse came from a 1934 commercial carnation greenhouse that Ward salvaged in Sudbury.

Some of Ward’s work is in public spaces. He recently consulted on the restoration of Edith Wharton’s greenhouse at The Mount, her 1902 Lenox estate, and is now consulting for and working on the restoration of the 1899 Lyman Plant House at Smith College in Northampton. He also has worked on the Lyman Estate in Waltham on and off for two decades, he says, doing everything from replacing the glass to writing the specs for a major reconstruction.

Though greenhouses made from traditional materials need some maintenance, they can last another hundred years. "One of the reasons people don’t make greenhouses like this anymore," says Ward, "is that it would be very expensive." The greenhouses Ward builds can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000, depending on the size.

Ward gets much pleasure from knowing that pieces of old greenhouses all around New England show up in those he restores elsewhere. He’s happy no matter what people do with their greenhouses but allows that "it’s nice when someone uses the thing, " though he probably wouldn’t be in that category himself.

"I haven’t owned a place where it made sense to have one. But if I had a greenhouse, I probably wouldn’t have a lot of plants. I’m more interested in the structure."

Diane Daniel is a freelance writer.

Footnote goes here...

Copyright © 2002, Ward Greenhouses, All Rights Reserved