QC Botanical Center unveils one-of-a-kind rolling classroom

The Quad Cities Botanical Center has launched “a new chapter,” its executive director said Thursday at the unveiling and – appropriately given its mission – a garland cutting for its one-off Plant Discovery Bus. Storm warnings didn’t deter an invited crowd from gathering June 13 in front of the botanical center at 2525 4th Ave., […]

The Quad Cities Botanical Center has launched “a new chapter,” its executive director said Thursday at the unveiling and – appropriately given its mission – a garland cutting for its one-off Plant Discovery Bus. Storm warnings didn’t deter an invited crowd from gathering June 13 in front of the botanical center at 2525 4th Ave., Rock Island, to share the fruits of a two-year process to cultivate the first rolling greenhouse classroom in the nation.  “This day marks the first of the next chapter for the Quad City Botanical Center. For 25 years, we have existed within the five acres we sit on right now,” Executive Director Ryan Wille said. In that time, he said, “What we’re most proud of is simple: Our impact on the Quad Cities school-age youth and our important role in their understanding of the natural world around them.”  In 2023, for example, the center reached more than 17,000 K-12 students with hands-on engagement programs. Now, with its new rolling classroom, it can reach significantly more students by taking education to them. Helping fulfill that mission will be Belinda Brain, a 2024 Iowa State University graduate who will staff the Plant Discovery Bus. She was on hand Thursday to talk about the features of the new bus and her new duties with guests during tours of the traveling greenhouse. The chance to lead the one-of-a-kind mobile classroom is, the Muscatine, Iowa, native told the QCBJ, her dream job.

Rock Island Mayor Mike Thoms was among those cheering the finished product. “It never ceases to amaze me all the different ways that people get creative. And the botanical center here has done it again,” the mayor said from the podium. Representatives of MetroLINK and the Illinois Department of Transportation, which donated the bus-turned-classroom,  also shared the podium at the reveal. “In the fall of 2022 Ryan Wille met with MetroLINK staff to pitch the idea of a mobile greenhouse,”  said Lucie Van Hecke, project administrator for MetroLINK. “We immediately loved the idea and started brainstorming and identifying if we had a vehicle in our fleet that we could part with to fulfill this mission.” They found one and began taking the steps required to donate it. “We are beyond thrilled to see this mobile greenhouse come to fruition,” according to IDOT’s Jeff Waxman, who said he was first contacted by Jennifer Hirsch, MetroLINK’s manager of administration, about the vehicle. “According to what Jennifer told me, which is a reality now, this bus would be used to visit local schools, teach students about ecological life” and help MetroLINK further one of its central missions.  “As we know MetroLINK is very futuristic as far as the environment goes,” Mr. Waxman said, pointing to the Rock Island County transit agency’s fleet of compressed natural gas and electric buses. The donation also fits the botanical center’s central mission to educate more students about the importance of the natural world around them. In 2023, for example, the center reached “over 17,000 learners with hands-on direct engagement programming” through the largely on-site work of an education team Mr. Wille called “the best in the business.” Those educators also are eager to find ways to reach more young people even in challenging times. “As the world pivoted out of COVID, the way learners came to us was flipped upside down,” he added. “There were transportation shortages, funding issues and the seasonality of our field trips along with our space constraints here on site which put us in a bit of a bind.” Finding a way to break that ceiling has been a key part of the botanical center’s discussion along with trying to put themselves in the shoes “of our amazing Quad Cities teachers” to understand the challenges they have in taking children on a field trip to the center.  As they began looking for ways to remove barriers, a staffer suggested putting the greenhouse on wheels. “And we thought ‘why not,” Mr. Wille said. “Aside from finding a suitable bus for the right price, funding, figuring out how it would work, and finding experts to fabricate it, convincing the schools to let us do a field trip for the entire school in their parking lot, ensuring the bus and whether or not the state of Illinois would actually give us a license plate for something like this, we could see no good reason to not try and do something unique,” he quipped. Mr. Wille took time Thursday to thank the Quad Citians who helped them along the difficult path. For example, after struggling to find a vehicle, Mr. Wille said Mark Schwiebert, a botanical center board member, told him “Why don’t you call Jeff Nelson over at MetroLINK, I bet he might have an idea.”  The former Rock Island mayor and community leader was right and the center was soon the owner of a 2014 paratransit bus with wheelchair lift, large windows, slip-resistant floors and “a pristine routine maintenance record as long as my leg,” Mr. Wille added. “And the best part was the bus was donated to us by MetroLINK with the approval of the Illinois Department of Transportation.”  Once they had their bus, those “plant people” were ready to call in the experts. “Something like this had never been done before in the public garden world that we live in and we were in uncharted territory,” he added. “I made one call and one call only to Tim Wren at Edwards Creative right down the street in Milan, Illinois,” Mr. Wille recalled. And in August 2022, the center’s team sent its first sketch to Edwards. It was scribbled on a sheet of graph paper “to make it look like we knew what we were doing,” he added. The center soon learned it was in good hands. “One thing that stood out above their design prowess, creativity and their ability to make a visual splash in a big way was their listening and problem-solving skills,” Mr. Wille said. “So just like that, we had a bus, we had a fabrication partner, now we need some funding.”  He pitched frequent donor Linda Bowers over lunch and she quickly said “yes.” Her lead gift was matched by the Riverboat Development Authority and Scott County Development Authority. The center also reached out to Cathy Ruggeberg, Rock Island-Milan School District assistant superintendent for instruction, to help ensure the rolling classroom would meet the curriculum needs of teachers. “After working with Dr. Ruggeberg’s team, we are proud to share that this bus is 100% booked for the 2024-25 school year starting when the kids go back to school,” Mr. Wille said. “We now had everything we needed including students.” Then, Mr. Wille said  “We didn’t want the already stretched-thin schools to have to find funding to experience this.” Enter the Rock Island Community Foundation’s Keith and Rosemary Woodward’s Charitable Trust and the Moline Regional Community Foundation. Their support will ensure the program will be available at zero costs to learners for the next three years, Mr. Wille said. The bus also needed to be stocked. Stepping up to pay for it was the Mark W. Schwiebert Fund for Environmental Studies at the Quad Cities Community Foundation, and the American Chemical Society of Iowa. Mr. Wille thanked those donors as well as the entire team of experts and other supporters just moments before the white cover emblazoned with the MetroLINK logo was pulled from the bus on Thursday. The project wouldn’t have happened, Mr. Wille said, if 50 Quad Citizens who didn’t  know each other two years ago had not gotten together and “collaborated, became creative, worked together, contributed as experts in their field from philanthropy to education to public transit to exhibit creation and created something unique, cool and literally one of a kind that now exists here in Rock Island, Illinois.” He added: “And to that I would say: ‘QC, that’s where we have a one-of-a-kind Plant Discovery Bus.’”