If you live in a part of the country which is subject to strong winds or heavy snow, you may despair of the idea of ever having a greenhouse which can last in your garden. These are just the places where it’s hardest to grow a good range of fruit and vegetables outdoors, so they’re the places where greenhouses would be most useful, but how can you find one which is resilient enough to cope? Fortunately, while traditional hoop house greenhouses may have problems, there are a number of modern greenhouse styles which are better equipped to handle the job.

Lean-to greenhouse styles are perfect for places where the prevailing wind always comes from the same direction, such as coastal properties. Simply set up your lean-to greenhouse of the leeward side of your house or an outbuilding and let it enjoy the shelter of solid walls. Lean-to greenhouses still get plenty of light. Because of the solidity of the walls they attach to, these greenhouse styles can also be easier to insulate.

If the wind around your home comes from a variety of directions, or if you have no suitable wall against which to fix your greenhouse, alternative greenhouse styles more suitable for you may include the quonset greenhouse. With these greenhouse styles, the wind blows over the tops of them rather than building up the force to knock them down. Quonset greenhouses are also well suited to snowy conditions because snow slides off their curved panels.

It’s obvious that, under snowy conditions, the main things you need to avoid are flat-roofed greenhouse styles, but you may be surprised at the number and variety of different curved and sloping-roofed greenhouse styles now on the market. Snow is much slower to build up on these greenhouse styles, so you can easily clear it off before the weight of it breaks panels. This new range of greenhouse styles means that it’s now possible to keep a successful greenhouse virtually anywhere.