Supply Only Conservatory

The Alhambra goes on tour

The first thing you notice is the heat: the air is humid and a little heavy, like a Mediterranean summer. Next comes the soothing sound of water trickling in a fountain, then the smell - here, rich and earthy, there, sweetly perfumed by citrus blossoms and jasmine.

"Everybody talks about the fragrance," says Karen Daubmann, the director of exhibitions and seasonal displays at The New York Botanical Garden.

For those who take the 20-minute train ride from midtown Manhattan to its 250 emerald-green acres in the Bronx, any visit to the garden is like a day-trip to another land. Until August 21, the garden is showing vistas even more distant, in both geography and time: Spain in the age of Islamic rule (711-1492) and, by extension, the Middle East, wellspring of its art and culture.

This year's summer exhibition, Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra, has transformed the Enid A Haupt Conservatory into a microcosm of Islamic Spain. While New Yorkers await the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Islamic galleries on November 1 after years of renovation, the Botanical Garden is tiding them over with a glimpse of visual art forms that may rarely cross their minds: landscape architecture and garden design. (The Brooklyn Museum also has an extensive Islamic collection, reinstalled two years ago after its own major renovation.)

The path from the garden's gates to the conservatory sets the stage with Poetry Walk, a sampling of poems by Federico García Lorca, who was born in Granada in 1936, posted in the outdoor gardens. Then it's on to the conservatory, a glass confection reminiscent of London's fabled Crystal Palace of 1851.

The Alhambra is, of course, one of the jewels of civilisation. A cornerstone of Islamic Spain, it was rediscovered by the Romantics and is now a Unesco World Heritage Site. The fortress and palace in the hills overlooking Granada in southern Spain, completed by the Nasrid dynasty (1232-1492), blends mediaeval Spanish architecture with Roman, Islamic and even Renaissance elements. Its very name is believed to come from the Arabic Al-hamra, meaning red, for the red dust on the stucco fortress at the site.

The Botanical Garden seeks to replicate this not in exactitude, but in feeling and spirit. "Our goal is to evoke the Alhambra for those who've been there and those who want to go," said Todd Forrest, the vice president for horticulture and living collections. "They learn how innovative and inquisitive each of the builders were" as they worked to achieve beauty while making the gardens ever more productive. "That extends all the way from the garden's creation to today," Forrest added. "It's still a vibrant, living garden.

Conservatory Kits

Conservatory kits are a great way to improve you the value of your home if done well. Conservatory kits can also be cheap and nasty and create an eyesore.

It is a common misconception that all conservatory kits are the same. Well let me tell you now they aren’t. Like everything there are good and bad and like everything in life you generally get what you pay for. What they are, is great way of adding space and value to your home.

So what should I look out for and what are the differences between the different types of supply only conservatory kits?

Generally it’s not what the salesman tells you it’s important to know what he has not told you. When buying a conservatory kit make sure that you get at least 2 quotes. All diy conservatory kit companies will do this free of charge. Some of the better ones will supply you with a 3d drawing of your choice so that visualising the build is much easier. Always ask for a Conservatory Kit product specification. Below is my minimum recommendation:

1. The conservatory kit is pre-glazed i.e. the window panels come out to you with the glass in and then are joined together using aluminium joiners. This prevents you smashing the glass when trying to glaze the frames. Don’t listen to the salesman that his unglazed conservatory is easy to glaze ask him to explain how the beading fits and he will soon run out of the room. He will have never glazed one in his life. Trust me I have and you have to match the glass to the aperture, mark and remove the glass, pack it correctly so that the drainage isn’t blocked and then put the beading back in. It’s a ball ache and he doesn’t want to tell you that. Do you know how to toe and heel a door so it doesn’t stick?

2. That it is a 70mm System. This means that the conservatory window frames are at least 70mm thick some systems brought in from sunnier climates are 50 or 60mm these have lower insulation properties and so you build will lose heat rapidly.

3. That the glass in the windows of the conservatory kit is 28mm and internally glazed. This is a great trick on low end cheap conservatory kits. Make the glass units thinner usually 20mm or 24mm and then externally glaze the product. This means that again you lose heat due to thinner glass units but more worryingly your glass units can be removed from the outside. They are less secure and easy to break in to as the beading can be removed from the outside.

4.

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