Backyard Greenhouses Are Growing On Homeowners

Known for blistering summers, the Pacific Coast of British Columbia also grows chilly when the planting season arrives. Emily Yewchuk’s desire to construct a greenhouse took hold when seedlings monopolized her kitchen and dining room just as the pandemic hit in March 2020.

“Being home all day long really gave me time to get a lot done in my garden and in my yard,” says the 34-year-old mother of three. Ms. Yewchuck and her husband, Tim Yewchuk, 41, built a beginner’s greenhouse last year at their 6,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home situated on an acre in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. Then she realized she wanted a larger greenhouse to accommodate planting, photography and entertaining.

Her second iteration, the Cottage Model by BC Greenhouse Builders, was erected this past February. It is 192 square feet and 12-feet high and cost roughly $20,000. That cost included extras, like additional ventilation, double storefront doors, pressure caps and hardware, but didn’t include the installation and the concrete foundation.

“I learned so much about what worked and didn’t work with my first greenhouse,” says Ms. Yewchuk, “that when it came to designing the second, I knew exactly what to change.”

Historically, elaborate, ornate greenhouses were fabricated for high-society households while more utilitarian versions were operated by commercial agriculturists. Today, home gardeners and plant aficionados alike are building and maintaining them in their own backyards. According to Angela Drake of BC Greenhouse Builders, the Surrey, British Columbia-based manufacturer and supplier of Ms. Yewchuk’s greenhouse, the company’s website traffic increased over the past year by 177%. More than 75% of that growth was driven by U.S. customers, she says. Maintaining the structures is easy, but ”what is challenging is the learning curve of growing and maintaining the temperature, humidity and sun exposure. It is a science experiment and will take a full year to understand the changing seasons,” says Ms. Drake.

“When the garden goes dormant in the winter, the greenhouse comes alive,” says garden connoisseur and decorator Bunny Williams, whose Falls Village, Conn., property hosts a 25-foot by 50-foot, metal-framed greenhouse purchased 25 years ago from W.H. Milikowski (now Griffin Greenhouse Supplies) for under $10,000. Ms. Williams’s three-bedroom home is surrounded by a studio, converted barn and conservatory, and multiple gardens all situated on 22 acres of land she’s accumulated over 30 years. “It’s more of a commercial greenhouse that I’ve tried to make as attractive as possible,” she says about the greenhouse’s wood borders and trim. “It functions beautifully.”

It is the challenge of procuring and growing exotic varieties that keeps these enthusiasts hooked year round. For Ms. Williams, who is in her 70s and maintains an interior-design practice and home in Manhattan with her husband, John Rosselli, who is in his 80s, the greenhouse became a place of solace during the pandemic as she dug, clipped and propagated her plants.

More recently, it has become a showplace for all the rare specimens she tended to during lockdown, including auriculas, one of her favourites. Ms. Williams acknowledges that her horticultural habit is a luxury. “I don’t buy expensive art or jewellery. I’ve become a plant collector,” she says. The collection includes orchids, succulents, passion flowers and geraniums. “I always say, a house is one thing, you can dust it once a week and it’s fine, but anything living requires daily care.”

Horticulturist Deborah Munson, 63, is head gardener at Twin Maples, a pastoral property in Salisbury, Conn., built by Douglas Thomas and her late husband Wilmer Thomas in 1996.

With views of the Litchfield Hills, Twin Maples incorporates a 40-acre wildflower meadow, with grounds based on a formal footprint and a Georgian-style house, designed by the late decorator David Easton. Encircled by both a reflecting and a swimming pool, terraces and formal gardens, the custom greenhouse is anchored by flower and vegetable gardens.

Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Easton chose handmade brick from North Carolina for the walled gardens to match the exterior of the main house. A metal pergola marking the entrance to the greenhouse was produced by Battle Hill Forge, in Millerton, N.Y. By September, the structure will be enveloped in sweet autumn clematis, fragrant and in full bloom.

Somewhat taller than a conventional estate greenhouse, Mrs. Thomas’s 1,040-square-foot version was built by Frank Jonkman and Sons Ltd. (now JGS Ltd.) with Agritechnove Inc., consulting engineers who assisted with the automation and computer system that controls and regulates heating, ventilation, shading, irrigation and misting systems. Separate warm and cool zones as well as a potting shed and exterior cold frames, a protected box structure in which roots grow and seeds germinate, were also incorporated. A weather station positioned on the roof monitors wind speed, direction, temperature and humidity as well as ambient light levels.

When the pandemic hit, interior designer Thomas O’Brien and his husband, designer Dan Fink, hunkered down in their Long Island home in Bellport, N.Y. In 2015, the couple built a walled garden and greenhouse there. The garden wall is made of Glen-Gery brick, which cost $25,000. The customized 114-square-foot Straight Eave Greenhouse by BC Greenhouse Builders cost $8,700.

“My greenhouse is not big. But I wanted to make it special. It’s incredibly useful,” Mr. O’Brien says about the traditional lean-to with cross-country frame, which is essentially a backyard model painted in a chic shade of dark green.

“I wanted it to feel vintage and classic,” he says. The greenhouse details include an antique black slate sink discovered in Bar Harbor, Maine, and a custom wood-panel door, also painted green. A mix of roses, palms, figs, peonies, sunflowers and herbs sourced from Peconic River Herb Farm in Calverton, N.Y., are just a few of Mr. O’Brien’s favorite plants.

“Because we were home all winter, I was able to be there daily throughout the season,” Mr. O’Brien says.

Kathryn Herman, a 57-year-old landscape designer, built a greenhouse on her property in Fairfield, Conn., in 2016, at a cost of around $324,000. “Greenhouses have a different smell, temperature, light and humidity than that of being outside. When you step into one, you are in a totally different environment, which makes them magical,” says Ms. Herman.

The customized greenhouse sits near the garage at the back of a 6-acre property, which she and her husband, Ron Herman, 58, purchased in 1998 for $950,000. The main house is 4,000 square feet with four bedrooms and 5½ bathrooms while an additional 2,000-square-foot guesthouse was also created for friends and family.

Ms. Herman’s 500-square-foot metal-framed Alitex greenhouse is equipped with Wi-Fi, warm and cool sections, and a heating system with sensors that monitor the temperature and never allow it to rise above 80 degrees.

“It’s all about ventilation,” says Ms. Herman. The greenhouse automatically opens and shuts the roof vent. Meanwhile, the motorized sensors gauge the climate best suited to her plants. “Air circulation is so important, so plants don’t become diseased,” Ms. Herman says. Positioned on an east-west axis, the length of the building gets southern exposure, while the built-in cold frames also get maximum sun.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.