My New 5ft Wooden Greenhouse Review - The Forest Victorian Wooden Greenhouse

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Are you looking for a 5ft wooden greenhouse review? Then please look at my 5ft Forest Victorian Greenhouse that I purchased myself after many years of wanting a greenhouse for the garden! I wanted a safe space where I could grow my flowers from seeds. A greenhouse keeps them away from slugs, heavy rain and somewhere warm so they grow nicely.

Growing flowers from seeds is an excellent way of having a garden full of beautiful flowers but a much more cost-effective way. You can purchase a pack of seeds for a few pounds depending on what you’re growing and have so many plants in return. You can take cuttings from the ones you’ve developed, and make even more flowers. But having a greenhouse keeps them warm and cosy, and allows them to grow well with lots of light, and not get eaten by slugs when they’re small!

I had started to grow my seeds inside my house in propagators, but I was then struggling with potting them on, I was taking over the house with seedlings and then I was putting them outside in a small plastic greenhouse, but the slugs got in and eat them.

So I started to look around in my garden, previously thinking I couldn’t fit a greenhouse in the garden that was large enough to make a difference, but small enough to fit in my garden. Then I spotted a little area to the side of my garden, it hasn’t been used for anything and was quite tricky to use. So I looked around and found you could buy half greenhouses!

5ft Wooden Greenhouse

I found a 5ft wooden greenhouse which was a cut-in-half greenhouse! This meant I could tuck the wooden greenhouse up against the wall, and use the 5ft height to fill with plants!

Video Review

Delivery

Delivery was prompt, it arrived around 12 days later but I was informed of the delivery day ahead and a very nice delivery driver delivered when stated. The greenhouse arrives unpackaged, and each piece is taken off one by one, we asked him to stack it up on the driveway and we would take it back and forth through the house. We don’t have side access to our house, so it might be different for you if you do.

Each piece is delivered loose

With your bag of fixings and instructions

Auto Vent Option

This 5ft wooden greenhouse comes with an option of an auto vent, this is when the fixing attaches to one of the greenhouse windows at the top and will automatically open depending on the heat. It has a substance inside which expands on heat and shrinks on cooler weather. So it pushed the window open and allows the heat out the top when needed. This is a really good option to have as it does the hard work for you and you don’t need to remember to open it each day!

I would like to get another one for the other window, as that is just manually opened and held open by a bit of wood.

Creating A Greenhouse Base

You need to get the ground prepared before you install your greenhouse, making sure you have a solid base, which is level and the flooring of the greenhouse is what you like as well. We had some leftover porcelain tiles from our garden patio that worked really well for the size, so we needed to create a base for those to sit on.

We dug out the area, lined it with weed membrane and filled it with leftover hardcore and gravel stones. Then bang these down to create a solid base of stones, this gives you the strength you need to lay things on top of it.

We then topped it with sand which then banged down into the stones, filling any gaps with sand. This bonds it all together and makes it even more solid. Get your spirit level and batten and smooth out to a level area. Then you’re ready to place your chosen tiles on top of this.

How Easy Was Putting Together The 5ft Wooden Greenhouse?

Once you have your space to put the wooden greenhouse, you can start building. Follow the instructions step by step and don’t try and skip any sections. Each section needs to be done in the correct order!

It was easier to do this with two people as you can then hold the parts up in the air whilst the other person attaches them, don’t try it on a windy day as it’s not steady until you get all the pieces together.

We used our cordless electric screwdriver which is really good as it saves your wrist and makes sure the screws are really well tightened, but have a normal screwdriver with you if you want to give them a extra turn without the power of the electric ones.

Make sure your doing the pilot holes before putting the screws in, this gives the screw something to knit into and less chance of the wood splitting.

You start by putting the main structure together, but your need access all around for this part, so don’t push right into position yet.

Two sides and two back pieces on by this point.

Then you need to get two front sections on and batten along the front, keep an eye on what way this batten goes on.

Securing The Wooden Greenhouse To Something At The Back

I wanted to secure the greenhouse to the fence post behind, just in case! I was a little worried it could topple over, I’m sure it wouldn’t but I was just making sure! So we purchased these metal plates with a hook on, and we then used a zip tie to join them together, but you could use anything to tie them together, just make sure it’s suitable for outside.

One was attached to the fence post which is a very secure post as it’s attached to a house as well.

Then the other one is attached to the main part of the greenhouse down the middle, making sure you’ve measured them to correctly meet up and then tie them together.

Place Greenhouse Into Position

Get the greenhouse into position but still make sure you can access the top of the greenhouse as now you need to put the windows on.

This picture here is the correct way around the windows, with the battens facing upwards.

Not this way around which we did first!

Warped Wood

We did have one section of the wood that was warped, as you can see the window doesn’t sit correctly on the wooden frame, I am hoping over time this will settle down and straighten out. We did clamp the wood overnight to see if it helped but had to be careful and remove this as the auto vent is on this side, so the window wanted to open by itself.

Shelving In The Wooden Greenhouse

Next up was installing the shelving, I love that this 5ft wooden greenhouse had shelving in the middle that could be raised and folded back down. This allows you to have taller items on the floor if you need them.

The fixings are placed on the shelves to slide the lock into place, I’ve placed quite a bit of weight on these since and they’ve helped up really well.

Installing The Doors

We had a little problem with the doors, first tip is to use a clamp to keep the doors aligned when you’re adding the hinges. This wasn’t the problem though, it was the fact that the greenhouse came in too small for the doors to smoothly shut without touching each other.

You can see where they touch so much when you shut them together, and we couldn’t see any reason why this should be from our installation.

This was them forced shut, they were so close together and really forcing on the doors and wood.

In the end, we had to unscrew the bottom batten and spread the width of the greenhouse apart so there was more room for the doors, this was quite fiddly to do once it was all together, but by doing this it gave more width and we just screwed the batten back in further along, leaving a gap at either end.

As you can see we now have more gaps at the bottom and the doors now swing properly open and shut.

All Built Ready To Paint!

I kept the pink wrapping on until I had painted this 5ft wooden greenhouse, I thought it would be much easier to paint it and not worry about getting in on the windows.

You could leave the greenhouse unpainted, or pick an exterior wood paint to paint this in.

I painted inside the same colour as my fences, using Protex Nude Taupe which is a brilliant paint, and the outside was Cuprinol Urban Slate. I love how the back blends into my fences when I look out the kitchen window, but the darker colour blends in with the trellis screening we have here.

When it came to peeling off the pink protective cover it was hard going, give yourself quite a while to do this. We found if you used a Stanley knife to cut the plastic off from the wood it allowed you to grab more and peel off in one go better. But basically work your way around one piece by one piece.

I’m over the moon with how the paintwork looks, and love how it blends into the garden nicely.

Lighting Up The Greenhouse

I wanted to make my wooden greenhouse look smart, so I added some little solar lights in that I picked up from B&M, it looks pretty cute at night!

Adding On Hardware

You need to add on the hardware to the doors, included are two handles and the locking latch for the inside and outside.

But what isn’t included is the door hooks, these should be included as these hold back the doors when they are left open. Which is very often on the hot summer days to keep it from getting too hot in there. So we picked these hooks up from Amazon, which aren’t quite the same metal as the ones supplied.

How Am I Storing My Plants In The Greenhouse?

I have purchased some trays that fit nicely on the shelves in my greenhouse that have an absorbent pad in the bottom, I can fit my 9-inch plant pots along the length of these and keep all the water from draining through the shelves and making a mess. Also, any excess water is left in the trays and used by the plants on really hot days.

I purchased these metal buckets from B&M to hold some little tools and strings that I use often.

Install a garden thermometer in the greenhouse to keep an eye on the temperature, you can see how low it drops at night to see if your plants need some extra coverage, or if the doors should be opened to help keep it cooler!

I love that the bottom of the greenhouse can be used for how you want as well, we’ve made some greenhouse stands which allowed me to use the bottom windows for plants, store space underneath, or store your beautiful watering can!

Overall Thoughts Of My 5ft Wooden Greenhouse

I love this greenhouse, my plants have thrived inside it and come on leaps and bounds since going in there. It’s big enough for me to have around 80 nine-inch pots on trays, which has given me loads of new plants for the garden. There were a couple little things that didn’t quite meet up to the quality of the item and needed some adjusting and fixing, but overall I am pleased. I would recommend this greenhouse if you’re looking for more space, but can’t fit a full sized one in your garden.