AS LIFE under lockdown continues, we’ve been turning to domestic hobbies. Those fortunate and wealthy enough to have a garden have had more time to spend in it, a particular advantage in the recent fine weather. 

For many of those without a garden, houseplants have become an increasing source of solace. 

Even before the pandemic, houseplants had seen a resurgence in popularity, with Swiss cheese plants the most Instagrammed plant, according to one 2019 survey. 
 
The earliest attested usage of the term “house plant” to refer to the plants we keep in our homes is dated from 1824, in a botanical guide called Flora Historica by Henry Phillips, a botanist from Brighton. 

Writing about fuchsia, he noted that it “is found to grow with greater luxuriance in the open air, than when nursed as a house plant.”  

For thousands of years, the introduction of plant species from elsewhere has been changing the flora of Britain. The history of British botany is deeply intertwined with social and economic history. 

Scientists, especially botanists, served the growth of the British empire in exploiting and expanding power abroad. The transport of plants played a huge role in transforming everywhere colonists landed. 

In pursuit of profit, no mission was too ambitious. For example, the British-funded HMS Bounty was sent off in 1787 to take breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the Caribbean in order to provide cheap food for slaves. The captain’s cabin was converted into a special greenhouse to keep the seafarers alive on the long sea voyage. 

The history of colonialism and analysis of contemporary neocolonialism is a story too long for us to address here. 

Back on this island, the inhabitants benefited from the import of beautiful and useful plants in the form of harvested crops, but also in living plants, brought back to be grown here. 

While many plants could be transplanted into the British climate with relative ease, many others required artificial climates. The need to produce these motivated immense technical innovation.

Henry Phillips, the Brighton botanist, had originally been a banker but had become interested in how to successfully grow plant species, particularly those not best-suited to the climate of southern England. 

The problems of producing an artificial climate rely on supplying and trapping enough heat in a room while also providing enough light to let plants thrive. 

The earliest records of successful indoor growing are from 15th-century Korea, where traditional underfloor heating methods maintained the temperature while waxed paper screens acted as windows to let in light and stop heat escaping. The innovation was used to grow plants during winter. 

The first glass greenhouses were introduced in Europe in the 17th century, for the growth of medically important plants. The development of large high-quality window-glass manufacture had made it possible to let enough sunlight into buildings for plants to grow well. 

Heated and well-lit rooms were soon introduced into the plans for palaces and country houses, in order to grow new exotic flowers and fruits for the pleasure of the rich. 

When Phillips wrote Flora Historica in the early 19th century it was becoming increasingly feasible to modulate and control temperature within buildings with scientific precision. 

The Industrial Revolution also meant that large quantities of iron could be used to build large open structures, opening up greenhouse architectures to large-scale public constructions such as the train shed at Liverpool Crown Street station in 1830. The same design approach was used for the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851. 

Twenty years earlier, the entrepreneurial botanist Phillips had made his own plans to further his botanical career with the construction of an immense greenhouse. His dream was to build a dome so high that even large trees could be grown under a roof in controlled conditions. 

Moreover, he intended that the greenhouse would be permanently heated, providing for trees that could thrive in very high temperatures and creating a tropical paradise in Brighton. 

With an engineer, he drew up plans for a gigantic conservatory of iron and glass, the inside heated to 32°C by burning coke.
 
The structure was called the Anthaeum (literally, a “flower-house”). When built, the Anthaeum was 20 metres high and 50 metres in diameter, covering 1.5 acres. 

For comparison, the tropical biome of the Eden Project covers 3.9 acres. By the standards of the time, it must have been an awesome sight.
 
Unfortunately, just two days before its unveiling, disaster struck. Temporary scaffolding was supporting the structure was removed by the head contractor, one Mr English. 

The 400-ton building collapsed under its own weight. As The Times reported the next day, “The immense ribs of iron snapped asunder in 10,000 pieces; and a great part of it, from the height it fell, was buried several feet deep in the earth.” Apocryphally, the shock to Phillips was so terrible that he went blind and never recovered his sight.
 
The engineering for the Anthaeum was clearly inadequate. But what went wrong? 

This was already at a time when engineering was sufficiently advanced to have calculated that the stresses involved in the design were simply too much. 

Historians looking back have diagnosed the central problem as a lack of co-ordination, with those involved on the project only focusing on their individual responsibility —  a problem that remains evergreen, as we deal with a contemporary Mr English removing all support structures immediately before the whole hubristic edifice comes crashing down.

Fortunately for us, the innovations begun in the medicinal greenhouses and stately homes of those more successful than Phillips eventually transferred to the architecture of modern homes. 

These improvements in heating, insulation and larger sources of natural light produced the warmth and light that produced good conditions for people as well as our houseplants. 

Living in high-quality houses is a right, not a privilege, just like access to the outdoors.