Southeast cultivates plans to construct new greenhouse

There's little room to maneuver through the flowers, ferns and ficus trees that populate Southeast Missouri State University's 23-year-old greenhouse.

But that could change soon. Southeast Missouri State University is cultivating plans for a new 11,000-square-foot greenhouse that will be twice as large as the current greenhouse built in 1979. The $650,000 project also includes a work building -- or "head house" as it's called in the greenhouse business -- a 20-space parking lot and an entrance road.

There's so little room in the current greenhouse that thousands of mums are being grown in plastic pots on the greenhouse's gravel parking lot off New Madrid Street west of the Show Me Center.

Watering hoses are draped across a framework of metal pipes. Several electric fans hang from the pipes too helping to cool down the greenhouse, where summer temperatures already have been in the 90s in the afternoons.

Potting soil and stacks of green and black plastic pots in all sizes crowd the front entrance.

"Everything is just shoved in here as tight as you can get it," said David Turpin, a horticulture major from St. Louis, as he emptied plastic trays of unwanted impatiens.

Room to pot plants and storage space is crammed into the front part of the existing greenhouse.

Hope to start this winter

School officials hope construction can begin this winter and be completed by next summer or fall at the latest. The new greenhouse would be built on a 17-acre site west of the university softball fields and track. The entrance will be from Bertling near its intersection with Old Sprigg Road.

Future plans call for construction of a building to house a horticulture classroom and a biotechnology lab as well as an arboretum, landscaped walkways that could extend to the nearby Show Me Center, and demonstration putting greens and fairways as part of turf management studies.

Students would be involved in planning, building and maintaining the greens and fairways.

Plans for the first phase have taken root through private donations. Dr. Wesley Mueller, Southeast's agriculture department chairman, said the second phase of the project could cost $1 million. The university hopes to secure state and federal grants to help fund that work.

A new greenhouse has been on the drawing board for at least a decade. The university raised $120,000 over the past decade.

But the project has taken on more urgency now that the university plans to build a parking garage and campus transit center on New Madrid. Site work will start later this year. The old greenhouse eventually will be razed to make room for the parking structure, which still awaits federal funding for construction.

Renewed effort for funds

With renewed fund-raising efforts, donations to the greenhouse project have climbed to about $400,000, Mueller said.

The project recently received $1,600 from the Aid Association for Lutherans. More than 20 people have contributed at least $1,000 to the project, including members of the university's agriculture faculty.

The school's fund-raising Southeast Missouri University Foundation has promised to match future donations to the project dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $144,000.

The new greenhouse will have a galvanized steel and aluminum frame with glass panes rather than the translucent plastic roof that lets sunlight into the existing, squat structure.

The side walls will be 12 feet tall, four feet higher than the current walls. That will allow the greenhouse to better handle vertical-growing plants such as tomatoes, said manager Denise Pingel.

The new greenhouse also will have roof vents that will allow outside air in to provide better ventilation, she said. It will have a larger propagation area where new plants will be sprayed with a mist of water to help them thrive.

The structure will have shades on the inside that will be controlled by a computer. The shades will automatically open and close as needed to control the amount of sunlight entering the greenhouse.

School officials say it will be a state-of-the-art facility.

As important as labs

Mueller said a greenhouse isn't a luxury, but a necessity. "We consider this as important as any laboratory classroom on campus," he said.

The greenhouse project reflects students' growing interest in horticulture as a career. Southeast has about 55 horticulture majors, up from 40 just a few years ago.

Mueller said the university's horticulture focus has changed over the years. Rather than growing fruits and vegetables, the focus has changed to landscaping, golf course management and urban forestry.

"There is such a demand for that now," he said.

While the current greenhouse isn't much to look at, it still does the job when it comes to growing plants including 160 varieties of mums. Horticulture companies donate most of the plants.

The greenhouse also generates money -- about $25,000 a year -- by selling mums, poinsettias and other plants, Pingel said.

The greenhouse also provides and maintains plants for campus offices.

Mueller said the money helps offset the cost of operating the greenhouse. He said sales have been good, especially because the university doesn't advertise its plants.

Mueller said the university greenhouse doesn't want to compete with commercial operations.

Beneath all the potting soil, there's plenty of science involved in growing plants.

"The green thumb has to do with light and water," he said.

Students like Turpin love digging in the dirt. "It's a good field to get into," Turpin said as morning light streamed into the greenhouse. "I want to have my own tree farm or nursery business."

Mueller said it's horticulture students like Turpin and the school's desire to serve them that dictate the need for a new greenhouse.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123