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4
Historic Gardens 2010
BCD Special Report
The tan pits were lined with pebbles at
the bottom followed by a layer of manure
and then topped with a layer of tanners’ bark
into which the pots were plunged. The last
of these elements was the most important.
Tanners’ bark (oak bark soaked in water and
used in leather tanning) fermented slowly,
steadily producing a constant temperature
of 25ºC–30ºC for two to three months and
a further two if stirred. Manure alone was
inferior, in that it heated violently at first
but cooled more quickly. Stable bottom
heat is essential for pineapple cultivation
and tanners’ bark provided the first reliable
source. It became one of the most fundamental
resources for hothouse gardeners and remained
in use until the end of the 19th century.
James Justice, a principal clerk at the
Court of Sessions at Edinburgh, was also a
talented amateur gardener. On his estate
at Crichton he developed an incredibly
efficient glasshouse in which he combined the
bark pits for succession and fruiting plants
under one roof. (Justice published a very
elegant drawing of it in
The Scots Gardiners’
Director
in 1754.) In a letter to Philip Miller
and other members of the Royal Society in
1728, he proudly announces: ‘I have eight of
the Ananas in fine fruit’. The letter makes
Justice the first documented gardener to have
grown pineapples successfully in Scotland,
which may be one of the reasons why he
was appointed fellow of The Royal Society
in 1730. The genus
Justicia
, named after him,
commemorates his horticultural legacy.
An interesting variant growing structure
was the pinery-vinery, first proposed by
Thomas Hitt in 1757. Here, vines created
a canopy for an understorey of pineapples.
The vines would have been planted, as was
customary in vineries, outside, and fed into
the structure through small open arches built
into the low brick wall. A fervent admirer of
this method was William Speechly, gardener
to the third Duke of Portland, and grandson of
William Bentinck, who had sent the first batch
of pineapples to Britain in 1692. Portland
inherited Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire
in 1762, and his passion for growing
pineapples nearly ruined him. Nevertheless,
he sent Speechly to Holland like many before
him to study all the latest techniques. Speechly
published his now greatly refined methods in
A Treatise on the Culture of the Pineapple and the
Management of the Hot-house
in 1779, with a
detailed plan of his ‘Approved Pine and Grape
Stove’. Overall, however, the structure is very
similar to Justice’s earlier design of 1730, and
Speechly may have drawn important lessons
from it. The profile is virtually identical and
he also combined the tanners’ bark pits for
young and fruiting plants into one structure,
the former at the front, the latter at the back.
The most stunning setting for pineapple
hothouses was in the kitchen garden at
Dunmore, Scotland, the seat of John
Murray, Earl of Dunmore. The roof of the
summerhouse, built into the sheltered south-
facing wall, is carved into the shape of a
giant stone pineapple and still commands
the walled orchard today. Its gothic ogee-
arched windows terminate cleverly into the
The extraordinary Pineapple Summerhouse at Dunmore, Scotland was once flanked by hothouses (1761–1776)
midrib of the leaves that curve outward in
beautiful arches four feet wide. Above, the
leaf-like bracts and plump fruitlets give it an
incredibly naturalistic look. The structure
is completed with a spiny-leafed crown. To
anyone familiar with pineapple varieties it is
immediately obvious that the cultivar ‘Jamaica
Queen’ must have been used as the model,
a variety with fiercely spiny leaves, outward
projecting fruitlets and a perfectly egg-shaped
outline tapering more towards the top.
Although this outstanding work of art
survives, the hothouses which would have
flanked it have gone; the chimneys for the
flues, beautifully disguised as Grecian urns are
now the only evidence that this exotic fruit
once flourished here. Astonishingly, both the
architect, and the date of this extraordinary
building are unknown, but it is thought to
have been carved by Italian stonemasons due
Plunging pineapples
back into leaf mould
and straw after
potting on at the
Lost Gardens of
Heligan, Cornwall