The Horticultural Society's gardens were close to the gardens of
William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, at
Chiswick House. The duke met the young gardener as he strolled in his gardens and became impressed with his skill and enthusiasm. He offered the 20-year-old Paxton the position of
head gardener at
Chatsworth, which was considered one of the finest landscaped gardens of the time. Although the duke was in Russia, Paxton set off for Chatsworth on the
Chesterfield coach arriving at Chatsworth at half past four in the morning. By his own account he had explored the gardens after scaling the kitchen garden wall, set the staff to work, eaten breakfast with the housekeeper and met his future wife, Sarah Bown, the housekeeper's niece, completing his first morning's work before nine o'clock. He married Bown in 1827, and she proved capable of managing his affairs, leaving him free to pursue his ideas. , 1865 He enjoyed a friendly relationship with his employer who recognised his diverse talents and facilitated his rise to prominence. One of Paxton's first projects was to redesign the garden around the new north wing of the house and expand Chatsworth's collection of conifers into a
arboretum which still exists. He became skilled at moving mature trees. The largest, weighing about eight tons, was moved from Kedleston Road in Derby. Among several other large projects at Chatsworth were the
rock garden, the
Emperor Fountain, and rebuilding
Edensor village. The Emperor Fountain was built in 1844; it was twice the height of
Nelson's Column and required the creation of a feeder lake on the hill above the gardens necessitating the excavation of of earth.
Greenhouses '' leaf in the lily house; Paxton's design for the Crystal Palace took its cue from the organic structure of this plant. In 1832, Paxton developed an interest in greenhouses at Chatsworth where he designed a series of buildings with "forcing frames" for
espalier trees and for the cultivation of exotic plants such as highly prized pineapples. At the time the use of glass houses was in its infancy and those at Chatsworth were dilapidated. After experimentation, he designed a glass house with a ridge and furrow roof that would be at right angles to the morning and evening sun and an ingenious frame design that would admit maximum light: the forerunner of the modern greenhouse. The next great building at Chatsworth was built for the first seeds of the
Victoria regia lily which had been sent to Kew from the Amazon in 1836. Although they had germinated and grown they had not flowered and in 1849 a seedling was given to Paxton to try out at Chatsworth. He entrusted it to
Eduard Ortgies, a young gardener and within two months the leaves were in diameter, and a month later it flowered. It continued growing and it became necessary to build a much larger house, the Victoria Regia House. Inspired by the waterlily's huge leaves – 'a natural feat of engineering' – he found the structure for his conservatory which he tested by floating his daughter Annie on a leaf. The secret was in the rigidity provided by the radiating ribs connecting with flexible cross-ribs. Constant experimentation over a number of years led him to devise the glasshouse design that inspired the Crystal Palace. ,
Cavendish bananas were cultivated by Paxton in the greenhouses of
Chatsworth House in 1836. With a cheap and light wooden frame, the conservatory design had a ridge-and-furrow roof to let in more light and drained rainwater away. He used hollow pillars doubling as drain pipes and designed a special rafter that acted as an internal and external gutter. All the elements were pre-fabricated and, like
modular buildings, could be produced in vast numbers and assembled into buildings of varied design. , built from 1836 to 1841 and demolished in the 1920s. In 1836, Paxton began construction of the Great Conservatory, or Stove, a huge glasshouse long and wide that was designed by the 6th Duke's architect
Decimus Burton. The columns and beams were made of
cast iron, and the arched elements of laminated wood. At the time, the conservatory was the largest glass building in the world. The largest sheet glass available at that time, made by
Robert Lucas Chance, was long. Chance produced sheets for Paxton's benefit. The structure was heated by eight boilers using of iron pipe and cost more than £30,000. It had a central carriageway and when the Queen was driven through, it was lit with twelve thousand lamps. It was prohibitively expensive to maintain, and was not heated during the First World War. The plants died and it was demolished in the 1920s. In 1848 Paxton created the
Conservative Wall, a glass house long by wide. ==Crystal Palace==