Birmingham Botanical Gardens Conservatory

Birmingham's botanical garden grew out of the ambition of Mayor James W. Morgan, who in the early 1960s set out to give the city a large public garden despite objections from the Park and Recreation Board. After visiting the Montreal Botanical Garden he asked its curator, Henry E. Teuscher, to help draw up a master plan for former Lane Park land on the southern slope of Red Mountain, just east of the zoo. With a budget of only 150,000 dollars for the whole project, he hired the local architect Charles McCauley to carry out the design concept.

The conservatory, centrepiece of the plan, was designed by Teuscher and built by Lord & Burnham. Work began in September 1961 and the building opened to the public on 18 December 1962, although some sources give 1963, the year the garden officially opened. A friends' organisation, the Birmingham Botanical Society, was created in 1964 to support the garden.

A needs assessment carried out in 2006-2007 by Montgomery Smith found that the conservatory had seen virtually no improvements or alterations in forty-four years, and proposed restoring it, reorganising the support facilities and enlarging the production greenhouses. In April 2011 safety concerns about the glass roof forced its closure. A 1.4-million-dollar restoration followed in 2013, after which the conservatory reopened to the public for the first time since 2011. The garden describes it as a now rare piece of architecture, many comparable structures across the country having been razed.

The conservatory is the work of Lord & Burnham, the now defunct greenhouse firm, built to a design by Henry E. Teuscher. The glazed building consists of three separate greenhouses gathered into one light-filled structure: the tropical house, the desert house and the citrus house, each devoted to its own group of plants.

The 2013 restoration addressed the whole envelope. The old glass was stripped and the structure cleaned before the building was reglazed with safety glass. The work also upgraded the electrical distribution, automated the ventilation sashes, repaired interior partition walls and replaced doors, removed asbestos and lead, and installed an internal Mylar shade blanket combined with an insulation system. The entrance was returned to its original appearance. As the 2006-2007 assessment noted that the building had received almost no alterations until then, the restored conservatory still reflects its original design.

Each of the three houses presents plants from around the world. The tropical house gathers useful plants of warm regions: vanilla orchid, banana, coffee and cacao. The desert house brings together species from arid places such as the Sonoran Desert and South Africa.

The citrus house is the most fragrant of the three: its trees bloom in winter and their fruit ripens in summer. Calamondin, lemon, lime, navel orange, grapefruit and miracle fruit grow there. Together they extend the outdoor collections of a garden that counts more than 12,000 kinds of plants across twenty-five gardens, along with a dedicated orchid space, the Samford Orchid Display Room, and a camellia house.

The conservatory stands at the heart of Birmingham Botanical Gardens, a garden of almost 70 acres at the foot of Red Mountain, next to Birmingham Zoo and Lane Park. It is best combined with the outdoor gardens, which hold more than thirty sculptures and several miles of paths; half a day covers the whole site comfortably. The citrus house is at its best in winter, when the trees are in flower, while the tropical house offers shelter in any weather. The garden welcomes more than 350,000 visitors a year.