Inside a beautiful attached greenhouse full of life…

Building your own greenhouse is a great idea if you are a gardener and want space to start seedlings, or grow plants that require a longer growing season than your climate can normally provide.

But a standalone greenhouse is one thing — an attached greenhouse design for your house brings in a whole other host of benefits to be considered that extend beyond the conveniences of growing food more easily.

Read on ahead to learn about all the reasons to consider an attached greenhouse design for your home — they include providing additional free heat, extending living space, and supplying space to grow food for a longer period of time.

Attached Greenhouses Provide Free Heat

Perhaps the biggest reason in my mind to build your own attached greenhouse is for the excellent effect of collecting free heat. By attaching a greenhouse to the south side of your home, you can use the space to capture heat in cold winter months, and use it to heat your home — for free! If you live in a cold climate, consider this. A greenhouse designed on the south side of the home will gradually warm on a clear, cold day. Once the space is warm (80 degrees or more), an operable window (or two) in the house can be opened to let in that warm air, essentially heating the house passively with the power of the sun. That means burning less wood or using less fuel to warm your home.

It’s a no-brainer, and it’s taking passive solar design one step further. Oh, and of course you could actually sit in the greenhouse itself on such cold, clear days as long as you have an easy access to the greenhouse from the interior of your home. Consider a small area that is well-furnished (a comfy chair or two, or a bench, with a little table, at least) to make the space more appealing for such occasions.

Extend Your Living Space (Inexpensively)

Greenhouses do not have to be terribly expensive, especially if you go the route of using recycled glass windows for the majority of your wall space — the cost is significantly less than a finished interior room. It may be wise to consider the greenhouse as an extension of your living space. I know one family that has a kitchen in their greenhouse and a great big pizza oven. (In fact, they spend most of their time in the greenhouse throughout the year.) During the summer, the space can be vented, keeping it as warm/cool as the outdoors, but in winter the space will normally get quite warm on a clear day.

In our new timber frame and straw bale house, we plan on adding a sink, solar shower, and composting toilet in our greenhouse. Going this route is way less expensive than an indoor bathroom proper (remember, finished interior rooms are expensive), plus it’s actually more convenient in a way, too.

Consider adding seating space to your greenhouse for those clear winter day occasions, when you can sit back and relax in 80+ degrees in shorts and a t-shirt, while it’s freezing outside!

Grow More Food

Of course, the most obvious benefit to designing a greenhouse is for the benefit for growing food. They provide space for starting seedlings, and growing plants that require longer growing seasons than what your climate can provide. Many folks choose to grow plants that would never survive the winter outside, such as meyer lemons or fig trees. Greenhouses are invaluable for serious gardeners or food producers. Having an attached greenhouse for this purpose brings the food that much closer to your door, too — it can be aesthetically very pleasant to have greenery thriving all year-round directly outside your windows.

Image credit: coco+kelley via photopin cc