[ LISTICLE · THE DISPATCH ]
The 10 Best Botanic Glasshouses and Palm Houses Worth a Rainy Day
A great Victorian glasshouse is the best rainy-day move in any city — tropical, warm, smelling of wet soil, with iron and glass arching overhead. These are the best glasshouses and conservatories to duck into when the weather turns.
The best glasshouses and conservatories aren’t a sunny-day activity. They’re the opposite. The whole point is that it’s grim and grey and freezing outside, and you push through a heavy door into this humid, green, eighteen-degree world where it smells of wet earth and there’s rain hammering on the glass above your head. It’s the best feeling. I plan rainy days around it.
I got hooked on a foul February afternoon at Kew, hiding from sideways sleet, when I realised the Palm House was basically empty and I had a Victorian rainforest entirely to myself. Steamed-up glasses. Dripping ferns. Bliss.
Here are the ten I’d run to in a downpour.
The list
1. The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London
The big one, the original, the 1848 cathedral of curved iron and glass that basically invented the whole genre. Inside it’s a steamy proper jungle — palms reaching up to the roof, a clammy heat that fogs your camera instantly. Climb the little spiral staircase to the walkway around the top for the canopy view. Kew isn’t cheap, but on a rotten day it’s the best ticket in the city.
2. Palmehus, Copenhagen Botanical Garden, Denmark
A gorgeous 1874 dome, and the spiral cast-iron staircase up to the walkway is the photo everyone takes for good reason. Free or nearly free to get into the gardens, a small fee for the house. Copenhagen does miserable weather better than almost anywhere, and ducking in here from the Danish drizzle is exactly what it was built for.
3. Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, New York Botanical Garden
Up in the Bronx, a glorious white Victorian-style glasshouse from 1902. The seasonal shows (the orchid one in late winter, the holiday train one) are worth timing a trip around. It’s a bit of a schlep on the Metro-North but on a bleak New York day it’s pure restoration for the soul.
4. Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew, London
Yes, Kew again, but this one’s a totally different beast — a modern 1980s structure with ten climate zones under one roof, from desert to dripping mangrove. You walk from cactus to carnivorous bog in about forty steps. The titan arum sometimes flowers here and stinks the whole place out, which is, frankly, a great day to visit.
5. Bicentennial Conservatory, Adelaide, Australia
A soaring single-span glasshouse holding lowland rainforest plants, and from the inside it feels like a great glass wave breaking over you. Adelaide gets properly wet in winter and this is the answer. Quiet, too — Australians don’t queue for plants the way Brits do.
6. Glasshouse, National Botanic Gardens, Dublin
A run of restored Victorian glasshouses by Richard Turner, the same Irish ironmaster behind half the great ones. The Curvilinear Range is the star — all that delicate ribbing. Dublin invented the rainy day, so this is practically a civic service. Free entry, which never hurts.
7. Jardin des Plantes Grandes Serres, Paris
Four big greenhouses, including a proper Art Deco one and a tropical rainforest house. Paris in the rain is romantic for about ten minutes and then you’re just cold and damp, so this is the move. The tropical house is the one — warm, lush, slightly unkempt in a charming way.
8. Gardens by the Bay Cloud Forest, Singapore
A bit of a cheat since Singapore’s “rainy day” is most days, but the Cloud Forest dome with its indoor mountain and 35-metre waterfall is a genuine marvel of glasshouse engineering. Cool and misty inside while it pours outside. Pricey, very modern, and unlike anything else on this list.
9. Temperate House, Kew, London
The largest surviving Victorian glasshouse on earth, reopened after a long restoration that brought the white ironwork back to life. Bigger and airier than the Palm House, full of plants from the cooler corners of the world. If you only do one Kew glasshouse — well, do the Palm House — but if you do two, this is the second.
10. Allan Gardens Conservatory, Toronto
Free, historic, and a genuine local secret on a slushy Toronto winter day. The 1910 domed palm house at the centre is the prettiest part. There’s a cat that sometimes patrols the place. Honestly that alone is reason enough.
A note on timing
The counterintuitive truth: the worse the weather, the better the glasshouse. Save these for the day the forecast collapses, not the one blue afternoon you get. Go on a weekday morning if you can, before the school trips descend and turn the narrow walkways into a scrum. And let your camera lens fog over — that’s the building doing its job, and theres no better sign you’ve found the right kind of warm.
A great glasshouse is a small act of weather defiance, and on the right grey day I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.
Wait for the worst forecast of the week, then go hide in a Victorian jungle. Best rainy-day plan there is.
This article contains affiliate links marked rel="sponsored". We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.