Northumberland gardeners were early experimenters with heated walls for ripening exotic fruit outdoors. A section of the wall at Fallodon Hall in Northumberland has a furnace and heating ducts and may be the work of Samuel Salkeld, a noted horticulturist in the late 17th century.
In 1775, the Newcastle Journal reported that Thomas Carr of Eshott in Northumberland, an acknowledged expert in growing pineapples, was using sea-sand instead of tanner's bark as a growing base and was achieving fruit of over three pounds each.