PalramCanopia Essence 8' x 12' Greenhouse

July 2023: I don't write many reviews anymore, but I wanted to help my fellow gardeners out. I researched the heck out of which greenhouse kit to buy, and settled on the Mythos because of the double-wall construction. That being said, these molded panels look and feel very flimsy. Like many others said, just put it together. It does get a lot sturdier once you're all done with construction - AND the anchor kit. Do not skip the anchor kit. My husband planned to do his own thing with anchors and realized that the kit comes with pieces that fit into the frame. It just made sense to use what was manufactured for the greenhouse. My base is a six-inch deep and four-inch wide concrete footing with a 4x4 wood frame bolted to that. I figure if this thing ever comes up off the base, we will have bigger problems than the greenhouse! My floor consists of concrete pavers laid on a sand base.Construction was not easy and you need two people. Lay all the pieces out first. If something seems missing, look for it tucked inside of another piece. There were numerous broken plastic pieces. Palram is fantastic about sending replacements. Your base has to be level and there is no wiggle room when fitting pieces together. If they don't fit, something is off and you will have to go back a step or two and adjust. Nothing gets forced into place. If you are considering the extra louvered vent - do it. You must be able to move air in and out, and the roof opening with the door wide open is not enough on a hot day. We installed the extra louvered window upside down. It is made to go at ground level. No thank you. Any number of critters could crawl in there. There is no screen, so you basically have a two-foot square hole in the side - at ground level if you follow the directions.Note on the vent/flap in the roof. Many people said it flies off at the slightest breeze. They must not have put it on correctly. It is actually pretty sturdy. So far, we have had 25-30 mph gusts and it does just fine.I had no idea what a greenhouse entailed until I bought one. Unless you plan to do very little in it, you will need electricity and water. I have the 6' x 8' constructed with the back end against my house. My setup now has five (GFI protected) outlets and a water faucet all inside. I am currently setting up grow lights, mist system, heating mats, and a heatsink. My heatsink is a 32 gallon trash can with an aquarium heater. It's probably not enough, but my goal is to avoid the added cost of running a heater all winter. Time will tell. I live in USDA zone 7b; temps range from 13°F to 100°F. I will update this review periodically and hope it helps.Reasons for only 4 stars: A split door would have been better. The extra side louvered window should not be a ground level IMHO. The anchor kit should be included, since not using it voids the warranty. Broken pieces were annoying because we had to wait for shipping. Palram is fantastic and ships right away, but quality control needs some improvement.

I originally rated this product with 1 star as I was missing a part and having problems getting it shipped from the manufacturer. After receiving the part I was able to finish the greenhouse and it turned out very good. Very sturdy and solid. I rated this a 4 because if the original issue.If you get a complete kit it is a 5.

Instructions aren't just bas, they are terrible. With one minor exception, there are no words, just pictures. Often it's not clear from the picture whether you are looking at a part from the front or the back. This slows the assembly time way down. Obviously, the company's designers favorite toy was an erector set, so if you never had one or didn't enjoy playing with it, you may want to pass .The package arrived in one big box that had a damaged corner. The box appeared to be too small for the contents because the top of the box didn't fit all the way to the bottom. When I opened it the aluminum was all jumbled together in no particular order. Much of the aluminum was scratched. Was this a return that the company repacked or just a poor job of packing? One corner of a polycarbonate sheet was slightly damaged where the box had been crushed. My first reaction was to return it, but I had waited several weeks to get it and I wanted to get on with this project.I started by cataloging all the pieces to insure I had everything. I took me 3 hours to do that. Why? Well, first there are a lot of pieces. Second, the pictures and quantities of the parts were put together in the manual in random, rather than numerical, order. So page 1 has part numbers ranging like 996, 7312, 992, 981. etc. There are 4 pages with pictures of random part numbers. So you pick a part out of the box and search for the number. Sometimes there is a small white sticker with the number, other parts had the number engraved on it. Now, to find the part in your hand you had to search 4 pages of the manual. If there was more than 1 you had to either find the others in the jumble of aluminum, or set it aside while you continued to sort. I took a roll of wide masking tape, wrote the number in large letters with a marker pen, put it on the part and set it aside until I found the others. The whole process was a nightmare.I had already built a 6' x 8' plywood base for the greenhouse, which took a few days because my yard sloped and I wanted the house level. The initial assembly of the galvanized base was straightforward but attaching the middle post to the base made the whole structure rather wobblely, the base simple wasn't sturdy enough to support the post freestanding. So I temporarily clamped 2x4's the the corner post to secure everything. The angle pieces designed to keep the structure from racking are extremely light, so they are good in tension only. After assembling the 4 walls the structure seemed flimsy.I had always anticipated building my own wood shelf system inside the greenhouse. Now that I could see how this structure was designed, I did the following. There are inside tracks on the posts which the slide square head bolts into in order to fasten the whole structure together. I found that toilet bolts would fit in these slots with a little filing of the edges. Toilet bolts are 2.5 to 3" long. So at every post I could slide the bolts up the 34" and drill a hole in a 2x3 to attach it to the structure. At the corners I just drilled a hole on the aluminum flange and put my toilet bolt in there. This not only gave me support for a shelf all around, it stiffened the whole structure immensely.The whole process was slow. It took me about a week, working 6 hours a day, to assemble this kit. In the end, I do have a cute little greenhouse that looks nice. Be sure to secure the base to a foundation or this thing will be like the book, Gone With the Wind. Lastly, one thing that I did not realize was that the base creates a 4" lip that you have to step over at the door entrance. We wanted to be able to roll a wagon into it, so I cut the base out each side of the door and bolted the base to the floor. I took the piece I cut out and pop riveted it to the bottom of the door.Good Luck

From the listing it sounded like this was in original condition, just not original packaging. I wasn't expecting perfect but, one of the panels actually had a hole in it and was cracked in other spots. I had to seal it with silicon caulk, hope it holds. I covered it with a nice sticker, but wish I hadn't had to. Other than that, the greenhouse itself seems very sturdy, wasn't too hard to put together. We put it in a fairly sheltered spot as we get high winds here, and bolted it to large concrete pavers. I plan to clamp the arms of the roof vent whenever high winds are forecast since many reviews I've read said the vent could lift off in high winds (60 MPH isn't unusual in winter here).

We had a few reservations with this product before purchase, as the price was very reasonable, but as this also made it affordable to us we went ahead. So pleased we did, as the 8ft by 6 ft greenhouse exceeded our expectations; excellent quality when assembled, and well packed in the delivery mode. The assembly instructions were pretty good, and a good tip - follow the instructions to the letter - this will save you time dismantling bits that you did out of sequence. It does require two people for assembly as the partly assembled bits are large, we took two days to do it in a leisurely fashion; if we had to do another we'd do it much quicker. The glazing slides into channels in the framing and was generally easy to fit. In our opinion you also need to purchase an automatic opener for this or any greenhouse. We added a Bayliss XL which was a little fiddly to fit (see separate review) but a good product.We found, upon assembly, one of the diagonal bracing bars was missing from the package. This was not essential for initial assembly, so we installed the fixings ready for installation, and contacted the helpline. They sent the missing piece by return, free of charge of course, so we have no complaints here.Overall, an excellent greenhouse for the money, which has already given us great pleasure, and we look forward to many years of service from it.

I have had the greenhouse for 11 months now and I have found a major design problem with the roof window. The window has been blown off the roof in the first winter storm (there isn't a screwed/bolted hinge on the window so the wind has pulled the window out of the roof, I have now been told the guarantee dosnt cover "weather damage" so I need to purchase a new window from PALRAM. I question wether this design is fit for purpose for the UK weather if its broken this early

The greenhouse arrived very quickly. All the parts checked and ok. It took two of us over 16 hours to erect. We found that some of the instructions were very basic and really needed more explanation. For example when constructing the door it didn’t state which was the inside ir outside. Feel it would be good to include base anchors for concrete or lawn. Overall satisfied with the build quality.

it is currently in pieces at the bottom of the garden one bit of high winds a few months back and the whole thing fell to bits and the frame warped so cannot put it back together PLEASE DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY

Very pleased with this little green house ,you need to read the in instructions on how to assemble and go slowlyBut it's a lot stronger than it looks when you open the box.