Maryland Custom Greenhouses
Authorized Arcadia GlassHouse dealer and installer serving Harford, Baltimore, and Cecil County. American-made glass and polycarbonate greenhouses, engineered for Maryland winters and installed start to finish, including the foundation and the permit.
About Our Greenhouses
Maryland gives you about six good growing months. A proper greenhouse gives you twelve. We are an authorized dealer and installer for Arcadia GlassHouse, an American manufacturer that has been building custom glass greenhouses in Madison, Ohio since 2004. Their structural components are made in the United States, the frames carry a lifetime warranty, and every greenhouse is built to order for the property it sits on. We handle the part a kit company cannot: evaluating your site, pouring the footings, building the kneewall, pulling the permit, assembling and glazing the structure, and running power and water out to it.
Why Build With Us
Factory-supported dealer and installer for Arcadia GlassHouse. Made in the USA with a lifetime frame warranty.
Engineered to 30 lbs per square foot of snow load and 105 mph winds as standard, with heavier engineering available where your site or code requires it.
Site evaluation, footings, kneewall masonry, assembly, glazing, and utility rough-in. Not a kit dropped in your driveway.
Harford, Baltimore, and Cecil County all permit greenhouses differently. We file the plans, schedule the inspections, and close the permit out.
Three Arcadia Series
Premium Kit
The Lord & Burnham name goes back to 1856, when the company built glasshouses for botanical gardens and estates across North America. Today's kits keep that architecture and pair it with precision-cut aluminum framing, stainless-steel hardware, and tempered glass. Straight or curved eave, freestanding or lean-to. Far stronger than the clip-together hobby kits sold at big-box stores.
Flagship Custom
The series most homeowners choose. Heavy-gauge extruded aluminum with welded trusses, which means no interior posts getting in the way of tall plants or hanging baskets. Fully custom sizing, glazing, roof pitch, and finish. Lifetime frame warranty.
Insulated
For growers who want to run tropicals, citrus, and propagation straight through a Maryland January without fighting the heating bill. Seven-eighths inch insulated double-pane tempered glass in a thermally broken frame holds interior temperatures far more steadily than single-pane. Low-E coatings available to manage summer solar gain.
| Spec | Lord & Burnham | Arcadia GlassHouse | Sierra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frame | Aluminum, bolt-together | Extruded aluminum, welded truss | Thermally broken aluminum |
| Glazing | 1/8" tempered glass, or 8mm polycarbonate roof | 3/16" tempered glass, 8mm multi-wall or 16mm five-wall polycarbonate, or hybrid | 7/8" insulated double-pane tempered glass |
| Snow load | 30 lbs/ft² | 30 lbs/ft² | 45 lbs/ft² |
| Wind load | 105 mph | 105 mph | 125 mph |
| Heavier engineering available | No | Yes | Yes |
| Eave style | Straight or curved | Straight | Straight or curved |
| Freestanding lean-to (no wall needed) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Kneewall compatible | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Colors | Mill standard; white, bronze, black, green, custom | Mill standard; white, bronze, black, green, custom | Bronze or white |
| Frame warranty | 10 year | Lifetime | Lifetime structural |
| Glazing warranty | 10 yr polycarbonate, 25 yr glass | 10 yr polycarbonate, 25 yr glass | Lifetime pro-rated glass |
Lord & Burnham is designed for bolt-together assembly. Talk to us about installation options for that series.
Layout Options
Light from all four sides and complete freedom on placement. The strongest growing environment and the version that becomes a focal point in the garden.
Connects to the house with a full greenhouse roof. Shares the home's wall for warmth and makes running power and water simple. Requires a frost-free foundation.
Mounts against an existing wall. Space-efficient and the warmest option per square foot, which makes it well suited to citrus and tropicals.
The efficiency of a lean-to without needing an existing wall to attach to. Useful when the best sun on the property is nowhere near the house.
Glazing
Glazing is the decision that drives everything else: how much light your plants get, how much heat you lose in January, and what the greenhouse costs to run. There is no single right answer, only the right answer for what you grow.
Maximum clarity and the highest light transmission. The classic greenhouse look. Best where appearance matters as much as growing.
Diffuses sunlight and protects plants from harsh direct rays. Lighter, nearly unbreakable, and better insulating than single-pane glass.
The best insulation in the standard Arcadia lineup. Worth considering if you plan to heat through the winter.
Glass sidewalls with a polycarbonate roof. Clear views at eye level, diffused light overhead. A common choice and often the best balance.
| Glazing | Visible light transmittance | R-value |
|---|---|---|
| Single-pane glass | 90% | 1.0 |
| 7/8" argon-filled double-pane glass | 81% | 2.3 |
Planning Tools
Size is the first real decision, and it drives everything after it. Our free planner turns five questions about what you grow and where the greenhouse would go into a width, a bench layout, a configuration, a roof pitch range, and the Arcadia series that fits. No pricing and no email required. Greenhouse cost depends on glazing, foundation, ventilation, and utilities, so the honest number still comes from a short call after we look at your site.
Available Now
Work out the width, bench layout, and whether a lean-to or freestanding structure suits your site.
Open the plannerStill In Progress
What sizes and glazing packages cost installed in Maryland. Waiting on enough completed local projects to publish honest figures.
Still In Progress
A ballpark number for your greenhouse in under two minutes. It comes after the cost guide, since it needs the same installed figures.
Permits
A greenhouse is an accessory structure, and the three counties we serve treat accessory structures very differently. This trips up a lot of homeowners who buy a kit online and assume they can just set it on the lawn. We handle all of this as part of the build.
Harford requires a building permit for every residential accessory structure, no matter the size, and prefabricated structures need the permit before they are placed on the property. You may have read that anything under 200 square feet is exempt. That is not correct in Harford. The 200 square foot threshold only waives the construction-plan submittal, not the permit itself. Detached accessory structures sit a minimum of 3 feet from side and rear lot lines, and anything within 3 feet of the house is treated as attached and has to meet the stricter setbacks that apply to the house.
Baltimore County requires a permit for accessory structures over 120 square feet, and at any size if the property is in a Historic District, a floodplain, the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area, or on the County Landmarks List. The greenhouse has to sit in the rear yard behind the rear foundation wall line unless you get a variance. Minimum 2.5 feet from side and rear lines, but anything closer than 5 feet requires a one-hour fire-rated wall with no openings on that side, which is a real design constraint on a glass structure. Over 400 square feet requires frost-line footings. Baltimore County also states outright that a MHIC licensed contractor must be used.
Cecil County exempts one-story detached accessory structures from building permits when the floor area does not exceed 120 square feet. Above that, a permit is required through the Department of Land Use and Development Services. Waterfront and Critical Area sites near the top of the Chesapeake carry additional review, and the towns within Cecil have their own rules on top of the county's. We confirm the specific setbacks with Cecil County on every project before we design.
Permit rules change. Verified August 2026. We confirm current requirements with the county on every project.
Arcadia GlassHouse
Photography courtesy of Arcadia GlassHouse. Photos of our own Maryland installations will be added as projects complete.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Homeowners Say
"Mark was fantastic to work with from start to finish. He's incredibly knowledgeable and took the time to explain everything clearly, which really put us at ease. The entire experience was smooth, professional, and exceeded our expectations. You can tell he takes pride in what he does, and it shows in the quality of his work and the way he treats his clients. Highly recommend Mark and his team if you want the job done right!"
Brandon Herd
"Mark and his team are professional, detail oriented, and, most of all, they LISTEN to you. So rare these days. Cannot recommend them highly enough."
Jeffrey Buck
"We had a fantastic experience working with Mark Szabo and his team. Our deck of 35 years needed to be replaced and he came highly recommended. Mark was incredibly patient, walked us through every step of the process, and delivered a dream deck that exceeded our expectations. Communication was clear and consistent, and the deck was completed ahead of schedule and in less than a week's time. His crew was hard working, meticulous, and very respectful to us and our neighbors."
Marsha Cole
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