Plants for Garden Rooms and Home Extensions
Having had some experience of these home extensions it may be helpful here to make one or two suggestions for the sake of those who are considering having one erected on their own homes, suggestions which could also perhaps be helpful to those who already own such a structure and would welcome means of making it even more versatile and useful for the growing of plants in the home.
Fluorescent lighting is both brighter and cooler but it does not produce light in the correct spectrum, so it should be supplemented to some degree by incandescent lamps.
In other words, the first half-dozen or so will succeed with a single good light, the second under an incandescent lamp as well as fluorescent strip lighting and the third will really require two of each and so some special arrangement of lighting fittings. Plants need darkness as well as light, so they should receive roughly sixteen hours a day of artificial light.
The structure will be heated during the colder months by thermostatically controlled electric heaters and ventilation during the summer will be by automatically controlled vents.
Curtains should be installed, preferably for all windows, but certainly for those windows that face the south, otherwise the room can heat up to dangerous levels during the hottest months of the year.
A number of people are installing garden rooms or home extensions, both as additions to their normal living space and as homes for their plants. These vary widely in material, cost, size and type, but as a general rule are factory made and consequently reasonable in price. All are sufficiently windowed to admit much better light than is normally available in most homes, and are consequently excellent places in which to grow indoor plants of nearly all kinds.
