Brown Family Conservatory (Reynolda Gardens)

The Reynolda estate was laid out between 1906 and 1923 by tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds and his wife Katharine Smith Reynolds on a country estate and farm that then covered 1,067 acres. The greenhouse was one of its first elements: completed in 1913, it predates the family house by four years and the formal gardens, designed from 1915 by landscape architect Thomas W. Sears, by several.

Katharine Reynolds turned to the leading greenhouse builder Lord & Burnham, whose work also included greenhouses for the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, the New York Botanical Garden and San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers. The greenhouse was used to propagate vegetables, keep melons through the winter and produce flowers, but also to stage large seasonal displays for the community, among them a free annual chrysanthemum show. Lord & Burnham later featured the design in its catalogues as Number 539, praising it as both practical and decidedly ornamental.

After Katharine's death in 1924 the estate was gradually sold or given away; today's Reynolda Gardens were established for Wake Forest through gifts made between 1958 and 1962. Over the decades the greenhouse lost, most visibly, the curved glass of its wings. Closed in the autumn of 2023, it underwent a full rehabilitation from November, led by preservation architect Joseph K. Oppermann with Montgomery Smith Inc. and Blum Construction. It reopened on 8 October 2024 as the Brown Family Conservatory, named after its principal donors, Malcolm and Patricia Brown.

The greenhouse is organised around a central block under a domed roof, extended by two wings. The curved glass of those wings, the most striking feature of the original composition, had disappeared through successive alterations. According to Reynolda, it is one of only a few early twentieth-century Lord & Burnham greenhouses built for a private estate that still survive.

The 2023–2024 rehabilitation covered the restoration of the glazing and the installation of modern control systems to improve the way the greenhouse works and its efficiency. The interior was reorganised into themed spaces: an orangery, a sequence devoted to the world's Mediterranean-climate regions, a palm room, a tropical room and an orchid room.

The former florist's workroom next to the greenhouse was converted into a 680-square-foot (about 63 m²) welcome centre. Together they now form the public entrance to the estate and the threshold of the four acres of formal gardens.

From the start the greenhouse combined production and display: vegetables were propagated there, melons kept through the winter and flowers grown for the family, the farm and for sale. It also hosted large seasonal displays, including the annual chrysanthemum show, offered free to local people.

Since the 2024 reopening the plants have been arranged by theme. An orangery opens the visit, followed by a sequence evoking five Mediterranean-climate regions of the world. A palm room, a tropical room and an orchid room complete the layout, which brings very different floras together under one roof.

Outside, the greenhouse overlooks Thomas W. Sears's formal gardens and the two acres of the Greenhouse Gardens.

The greenhouse stands at the entrance to Reynolda's formal gardens, on the 170-acre estate run by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, and admission is free. The welcome centre in the former florist's workroom helps visitors find their way.

Allow half an hour for the greenhouse, then one to two hours for the four acres of formal gardens, the three-quarter-mile woodland trail and the 1.5-mile perimeter trail. The visit can continue at Reynolda House, completed four years after the greenhouse, which places it in the history of the Reynolds family.