Glorious Gardens work within the Worthing area, they ensure to incorporate the area’s agricultural history within their garden design.

Worthing has a strong agricultural background the area’s climate and fertile brickearth soil helped the development of the market-garden and glass-house industry there. A number of gardens around Worthing supplied the town with fresh fruit and vegetables in 1813, and in 1814 and 1849 there were three market-gardens in Worthing itself. In 1853 there were glasshouses there, and in 1859 and 1865 Worthing’s four nursery gardens produced flowers and hothouse grapes and sent fruit and vegetables to the London and Brighton markets early in the season. By 1896 there were many glasshouses immediately around the town which was described in 1899 as a ‘town of hot-houses’. Glorious Gardens incoropates the historic background of in the area into their garden designs.

Pioneers of large-scale glass-house production in the area were C.A. Elliott, recorded in Broad water from 1862,  who is said to have used glass from the Great Exhibition of 1851 for glass-houses there where he grew grapes for sale, and George Beer, a Worthing schoolmaster,  who started growing grapes 1872 and claimed to be the first in Worthing to build large glass-houses. In the 1870s few followed Beer’s lead, but later more did so, including some who became well known in local affairs, and other growers started in Broad water and Sompting.

The industry’s growth depended greatly on Worthing’s railhead.  At first Brighton fruiterers bought Beer’s grapes at Worthing but by 1882 the area was known for its early glass-house fruit grown for the London markets, and it also supplied London and Brighton with early vegetables. Large quantities of grapes, tomatoes, and cucumbers were grown by 1885, and in 1887 a Worthing grower successfully asserted that land covered by glasshouses was entitled to reduced rating, although that decision was reversed in 1900. By 1887 George Paine of Broad water had patented a counterbalance ventilating gear

for glasshouses, 250,000 of which were in use by 1890.

A boom began in the British glass-house industry in the early 1890s. By 1891 600

tons of fruit a year left Worthing, much of it for northern towns such as Leeds,

Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow. By 1893 a newly formed Fruit Growers

Association had obtained a reduction in railway charges. Special loading

facilities for fruit were opened c. 1894, and in 1895 920 tons of fruit went to London by

train and 174 tons elsewhere. By 1900, however, protective tariffs halted the

export of hot-house table grapes to Paris, prices were greatly reduced, and the

short-lived boom was over.

By 1899 there were 50 glasshouses in Worthing, and over 100 nurserymen. Worthing was known mainly for its high-quality, highly-priced, early glass-house produce, which included grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, melons, mushrooms, French beans, potatoes, and a few nectarines and figs. Glass-house flowers were only a side line, partly because early fruit-growing left little time for growing flowers in winter, but chrysanthemums were grown to provide winter employment for nursery labourers. Robert Piper, probably the most extensive grower of early fruit in England, had the largest Worthing nursery with 105 glasshouses. Glorious Gardens understand that many clients enjoy culviating so they create garden designs that have an ideal environment for growth.