Plant Science Teaching Goes High-Tech in New UW Greenhouse

With a gallery of computerized temperature, humidity and light controls, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s new instructional greenhouse will have plant science students cultivating in high-tech style.

Professor Bill Tracy's Agronomy 100 labs are being adapted to get the maximum benefit from the living demonstration space that the new greenhouse provides.

The $2.6 million D.C. Smith Greenhouse, built on the west wall of the Plant and Soil Sciences building on Linden Drive, is the latest step in a campus campaign to modernize plant science facilities. Workers are putting the finishing touches on the building before a formal dedication on April 4.

State funding and a private gift of $1.3 million from Irwin Smith, the son of former agronomy department chair D.C. Smith, provided the lion’s share of financing for the project. It replaces the old Babcock Greenhouse Range, razed a year ago to make room for the new Biochemistry building.

Enthusiasm over the new facility is blossoming across the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “The difference between old and new is like trying to grow plants in your garage, compared to a high-tech laboratory,” says greenhouse manager John Mather.

“This gives us the ability to teach the plant sciences and make an immediate connection with applications in the outside world,” adds horticulture Professor Brent McCown. “The challenge now is to upgrade our courses to the level of this facility.”

Agronomy Professor Bill Tracy can testify to that challenge. This is the first time in 12 years he’s incorporated greenhouse projects into his Agronomy 100 labs. Greenhouse conditions used to be too unpredictable to make it useful for the classroom.

“The labs for my class are going to change completely,” Tracy says. “They used to be taught with headphones and slides, but now we have a usable demonstration space.”

With greenhouses, control is everything, and this facility uses the best available in the industry, Mather says. A central computer for the 11 greenhouse bays monitors and keeps a record of environmental conditions. Each bay has mechanical curtains over the ceiling to control sunlight. They are heated with hot water rather than steam heat, and are cooled with a honeycomb-like panel that evaporates water.

They also have fine mesh screens that limit pest infiltration, which Mather says will reduce the need for pesticides by 80 percent. In a separate propagation bay, a fogging system can simulate extreme humidity by blanketing the room with a tropical haze.

This myriad of precise controls is what students will encounter in industry, McCown says, and is suitable for special research projects. For example, horticulture senior Seth Schwebs is studying the plant watering system developed at UW–Madison for plant growth in space. He is looking at whether that technology can be adapted for use in hydroponics agriculture.

The greenhouse’s centerpiece is a 1,600-square-foot conservatory facing Linden Drive, with regionally native granite floors and an arched glass ceiling supported by wood beams that follow the curve of the glass. By April 4, the room will be filled with mature ornamental plants. Mather says the conservatory will serve as a showcase for a new discipline called “interiorscaping,” where students learn good management practices for the “indoor gardens” of malls and office buildings.

The new D. C. Smith Instructional Greenhouse will be dedicated during WALSAA's 25th anniversary celebration.

The greenhouse is designed as a highly visible landmark for the Babcock entrance to campus. Architect David Black of Flad and Associates came up with a design that draws people inward. The large, open lobby is braced with a series of wood columns that branch out near the ceiling, creating the impression of a forest canopy. The whole building is illuminated at night by upward-directed lights that give the building a glowing “lantern effect.”

More than 400 undergraduates are majoring in the 10 departments that will use the new facility. They include agronomy, biochemistry, botany, entomology, forestry, genetics, horticulture, landscape architecture, plant pathology and soil sciences.

In recent years, McCown led a committee charged with planning for desperately needed upgrades of plant teaching and research facilities. The new greenhouse completes two-thirds of the committee’s goal. Last year, the university added 10,000 square feet of new research greenhouses to the Biotron building. A final project will be a complete renovation of the 40-year-old research greenhouses along Walnut Street, a $5 million project that will be paid for mostly through private donations.