Lyman Estate Greenhouses (The Vale)

Theodore Lyman, a Boston merchant, founded the Waltham estate in 1793 on 400 acres, and his family used it as a summer residence for more than 150 years. The architect Samuel McIntire designed the Federal-style mansion, completed in 1798. The estate's first greenhouse was built before 1800 and is thought to be the oldest in the United States.

The three-part grape house followed in 1804. It was used to grow citrus, figs, pineapples, bananas and forced native fruits, using the bark-pit technique. Around 1820 the camellia house was built as a separate structure; it was joined to the grape house in 1840. Each generation of the Lyman family showed a passion for horticulture: in Theodore Lyman's time the estate also had a 400-foot peach wall for espaliered fruit trees.

A greenhouse for cut flowers was added in 1930, tended by a dedicated "flower maid". Victorian and Colonial Revival renovations preserved these structures as family assets. Historic New England now owns the estate, reduced to 37 acres and designated a National Historic Landmark on 30 December 1970.

The complex is one of the oldest surviving greenhouse groups in the country. It is organised around the three-part grape house of 1804, built to force exotic fruit. It relied on a bark pit, a bed of fermenting plant matter that gives off heat, a technique Historic New England cites.

The camellia house, raised around 1820 as a separate building, was joined to the grape house in 1840. In 1930 a cut-flower greenhouse was added to the group.

The sources consulted give neither dimensions nor builders' names for the individual houses. The neighbouring mansion, designed by Samuel McIntire, was enlarged and altered in 1882 by the firm Richardson, Hartwell and Driver.

The camellia house shelters camellias, plants introduced to America via Europe in 1797 from China, Japan and Korea; many specimens in the Lyman collection are over a hundred years old. The grape house, which originally produced exotic fruit such as oranges, pineapples and bananas, is now occupied by grapevines descended from cuttings obtained in 1870 from Hampton Court in England.

In the nineteenth century the houses also grew citrus, figs and forced fruit, signs of the family's wealth and horticultural ambition. The 1930 greenhouse supplied the house's cut flowers.

The greenhouses can be visited all year round, for casual visits, group tours or the plant sales held on site by Historic New England. They are part of the estate preserved by Historic New England, together with McIntire's Federal mansion and 37 acres of grounds.

A visit combines naturally with the house and the 37-acre grounds. The sources consulted do not state when the camellias flower or when plant sales are held, which is best checked with Historic New England before travelling.