Linfield College alumni and students worked together to create a new greenhouse as part of this year’s Earth Week celebration.
“The students were interested in having something near the garden that they could grow starts in,” Duncan Reid, the sustainability coordinator at Linfield, said. The current greenhouse is located behind Newby Hall at Linfield. “It’s one of the many projects and ideas that students have been excited about in the past, so we hosted a tiny house building workshop over January Term.”
Students had the opportunity to work alongside Oliver Ogden ’06 during this workshop, sparking the idea for this newest project.
Ogden, along with his brother, runs a construction company and offered to help with any future building projects at Linfield after taking part in the workshop. When Reid proposed the greenhouse, Ogden began creating sketches right away. After Zia Shonk ’18 and Justin Meyer ’19, the garden managers, and Peri Muellner, the Greenfield president, got on board, the project was set in motion.
Muellner acted in the coordinator role and got together with Ogden to create the materials list, apply for a sustainability grant and work with the grounds crew to find the proper piece of land for building.
Building began in April with the help from Ogden and three other alumni, as well as over 20 different students.
“The building process is really interesting because it utilized some really environmentally friendly building practices,” Reid said. “We used pretty much all natural materials.”
The greenhouse was built using combinations of straw, sand, clay and reclaimed wood, as well as “bottle bricks” — Gatorade bottles packed densely with trash that can’t be recycled.
“We’re hoping to catch rain water off the roof and store it too, but that hasn’t been implemented,” Reid said.
This new greenhouse will allow students to start plants in the early spring and late winter when they are not able to outside. Their hope is that they can extend the growing season by that much more for at least a small quantity of crops.
