The Best of Hothouse Flowers

• A hothouse provides a tropical environment for exotic flowering plants. Paul Edmondson/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

  A greenhouse is a great backyard addition. Its simple shelter extends the growing season well past climate deadlines and allows for the cultivation of all kinds of flowers and plants. When your taste runs to the exotic, a hothouse will keep those blooms happy. A hothouse uses artificial heat and light in sufficient measure to grow the more demanding and fragile flowers that wouldn't survive under normal conditions but manage to look fabulous in a vase at an event.

Orchids

• Orchids are prime hothouse cultivars because they propagate easily but have strict requirements for light, heat, air circulation and humidity. A variety of orchids can be mixed in one hothouse if they are separated by care guidelines. Vandas prefer a fairly stable tropical heat wave, and phalaenopsis like cooler temperatures at night, sunset rather than sunrise windows, and indirect light. Cattleyas just love sun. All orchids require good humidity, and a successful hothouse environment will have mesh supports and fans to encourage air flow around and under the plants.

Bird-of-Paradise

• Bird-of-Paradise flowers look like an origami crane in flight. That accounts for their alternate name, the crane flower. The blooms are vivid orange. Purple "birds" and the stiff green leaves are evergreen, so the plant is ornamental even when it isn't in bloom. Bird-of-Paradise is a real tropical flower. If it is transferred from a hothouse to the yard, use it as a container highlight so it can be moved indoors at the first sign of frost. The University of Florida School of Agriculture says the plant needs good draining soil and should be cultivated with about 6 feet of space between plants to encourage flowering. Under the right conditions the plant will flower intermittently year-round.

Anthuriums

• Anthuriums are tropical blooms that grow along roadsides in the Caribbean and Latin America. They last for weeks as cut flowers. They are grown commercially in hothouses for their bright red blooms, unusual shape and ornamental leaves. The heart-shape red flower is really a modified leaf that surrounds a yellow spike with tiny flowers on it. Anthuriums grow to be about 15 to 20 inches tall, so they make arresting flower arrangements for foyers or sideboards. Although anthuriums are not native to Hawaii, so many anthuriums are grown and shipped from Hawaii that the flower has become identified with the state. Most hothouse anthuriums are sold today as cut flowers, but growers produce flowering houseplants of the species for sale as well. If you want to cultivate the plants in your own hothouse, the anthuriums will need a six-week winter hibernation to continue producing big bright blooms.