Boxwood Cottage sits in a garden of about two thirds of an acre, more than enough space to fulfil a long held ambition to have a ‘proper’ greenhouse. My previous greenhouse was of the octagonal metal type, perfectly good for seed sowing and growing a few tomatoes but not much more than that.

I spent a long time researching greenhouses, pored over websites, ordered lots of glossy catalogues and where possible had a look at real examples, often while visiting properties on ‘Open Gardens’ days.

In the end I settled on an Alitex ‘Hidcote’ greenhouse from the Alitex National Trust range. One of these is installed in the plant centre at Hidcote House, Gloucestershire so I was able to have a really good look at it before making my final decision.

It has a lovely solid powder-coated aluminium frame mounted on a brick dwarf wall and looks like it will last a lifetime.

There are a good number of bricks left over so one of my winter projects is to build a cold frame onto the side of the greenhouse.