Education Center - Needs & Capabilities
- COMMUNITY NEEDS: As a free and fully accessible museum, the Scott Arboretum holds a unique role in the community. The ways that individuals make use of a free venue is entirely different from ways they visit places that charge. It is ease of entry and repeated use that elevates a museum from a “nice to have” facility to a museum that is, “essential” on the civic scale, according to Museum News, the official publication of the American Association of Museums. The Scott Arboretum is just such an essential living collections museum. The operating facilities of the Scott Arboretum are insufficient to the needs, demands and expectations of its many patrons.
- ARBORETUM NEEDS: The existing Wister Greenhouse is too small, it does not meet current accessibility and safety standards, and it is not energy-efficient. In fact, the term “greenhouse” may call up grander images than the current facility merits. To envision the current greenhouse, imagine a student-designed project about the size of a large two-car garage, half-covered with a scratched and worn fiberglass roof, heavily caulked at the edges. Ventilation is inadequate and storage space so scarce that wading boots hang in the bathroom, and boxes are nailed to walls to hold tools, materials and equipment. The Scott Arboretum needs a new facility to appropriately house three of its major programs: The hands-on volunteer program, public education program and its horticulture collections and display program.
- Volunteer Program: The Arboretum has worked hard to train a corps of 120 regular volunteers, known as Arboretum Assistants; each Arboretum Assistant donates 50+ hours a year. This skilled volunteerism has a cash value of over $80,000/annually. Yet, there is no designated work or meeting space for these volunteers, who face a “staff only” sign as they approach the current greenhouse.
- Education Program: Besides vastly increasing the quality of the educational experience, by being welcoming, protected from the elements, ergonomically and functionally appropriate for horticulture, the new Education Center and Greenhouse will more than double the capacity of the Arboretum’s hands-on classes. This is particularly important because studies show that adults are best taught through experiential learning.
- Horticulture Collections and Display Program: Current space limitations means working with plants takes place in parking lots or under tents, from buckets dragged out for the day, in conditions hardly ideal for either people or plants. This world-class Arboretum needs a greenhouse with a propagation room, with an over-wintering room, and with teaching facilities that can maximize learning for volunteers, visitors, and program participants alike.
- Click here (pdf) to view current state of the existing Greenhouse.