Marc Finnell

The crucial thing is, at the time, we didn't call them greenhouses.

So Ward has his eureka moment by creating a miniature glass house.

He's now repeated the experiment on a few different plants around the house over a couple of years.

Now the time has come to expand the experiment.

And this is the moment Nathaniel Ward creates the thing that would become his legacy.

An object that on the surface looks incredibly humble, but this little box would help fuel global trade, imperial expansion, colonialism on a massive scale.

And this is what it looked like.

It was inspired by terrariums, so I want you to picture a sturdy wooden box about the size of a large chest with big glass panels built into the sides and a peaked glass roof sitting on top.

Inside, soil, plants, moisture.

Basically, a tiny portable ecosystem.

And the front panel, it would swing open so the plants inside could be tended to.

And there were handles on the sides so the whole thing could be hauled onto ships and dragged around the world.

It doesn't sound revolutionary, but it completely changed what humans could transport across oceans alive.

At this point it's 1833 and getting from England to Australia by ship took around six months.

So this was not exactly a quick test run.

The Wardian cases were kept up on deck where the plants could still get sunlight while the glass protected them from salt spray, wild weather and just the general chaos of life at sea.

And they specifically placed it on a part of the ship called the poop deck.

Before your brain goes there, no, it's not called that because of why you think.

It's actually from the Latin word pupus, meaning the stern of a ship, that raised bit at the back, which admittedly is slightly less funny.

Having plants protected from the elements while on a ship was a game changer.