
After more than a quarter century of opening its gates to students of all ages, the Quad City Botanical Center is eager to take its show on the road in what is believed to be the nation’s first mobile educational greenhouse. Demand for the new Plant Discovery Bus is already high months before the classroom […]
Already a subscriber? Log in
Want to Read More?
Get immediate, unlimited access to all subscriber content and much more.
Learn more in our subscriber FAQ.
- Unparalleled business coverage of the Iowa City / Cedar Rapids corridor.
- Immediate access to subscriber-only content on our website.
- 52 issues per year delivered digitally, in print or both.
- Support locally owned and operated journalism.
After more than a quarter century of opening its gates to students of all ages, the Quad City Botanical Center is eager to take its show on the road in what is believed to be the nation’s first mobile educational greenhouse.
Demand for the new Plant Discovery Bus is already high months before the classroom on wheels sets up shop in its first school parking lot this fall. (The completed project is not expected to be publicly unveiled until a planned Thursday, June 13, ribbon-cutting.)
In all, QC Botanical Center Executive Director Ryan Wille is hoping that over the next five years the rolling classroom will double the 10,000-12,000 young people the center serves each year.
Until now, a lack of space and seasonal Midwest weather have combined to keep the center from reaching as many of those youths as its leaders would like. “Every teacher wants to come here for a field trip but they all want to come on May 15th at 10 a.m. and there are only so many beautiful days during the school year that we can accommodate,” Mr. Wille told fellow Rock Island Rotarians during the club’s weekly meeting at the center. “So that’s been a major challenge for us as we’ve attempted and worked to grow our programming in the area.”
The QC Botanical Center occupies about five acres at 2525 Fourth Ave., Rock Island. It includes an indoor tropical atrium, outdoor gardens including a Children’s Garden with water feature, a G-Scale garden train exhibit, educational greenhouse, indoor banquet facility and gift shop. Staff there manage to accommodate as many young people as they can through field trips and classroom visits but until now there has been no way to take the true Botanical Center experience on the road.
“The quality of outside programming has always been kind of dictated by whatever we could throw in the back of a Ford Explorer, then drive to Frances Willard School and help the kids experience,” Mr. Wille said. “And that really wasn’t cutting the mustard for us. We want to do a little something more.”
But there is not a lot of “elbow room to grow that number without doing something a little wild and crazy,” he said.
Then, during a planning session, a staff member shared a wild wish that Mr. Wille & Co. ultimately decided might just be crazy enough to work. Still, he said, “‘Are we out of our minds?’ is a question we asked ourselves a time or two.’”
The answer will come when the Plant Discovery Bus is unveiled on Thursday, June 13, and the remodeled bus starts rolling at the start of the school year.
“It will be, to my knowledge, the first mobile educational greenhouse unit in the country,” Mr. Wille said. “There are a handful of units that exist to sell plants, mostly for-profit, greenhouse-nursery-type places. And that made me wonder why this hadn’t been done before.”
The long path to completion may be one reason. It began with finding a bus to accommodate the center’s needs. Mr. Wille contacted MetroLINK which had a 30-foot bus that was ready for retirement. He then reached out to Edward’s Creative, and the “wonderfully talented” exhibit creators and designers behind such well-known works as the John Deere Classic’s giant golf ball and putter, and the remodel of Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.
“In June of 2022, Ryan Wille reached out to me with an idea,” recalled Tim Wren, Edwards Creative’s director of sales and museum services. “He said, ‘Tim, I have a good lead on a school bus that I want to turn into a mobile greenhouse. I would like to have Edwards design and fabricate this for us. Can you pull this off?”
Months of brainstorming followed as planners considered “the needs of the bus, the community, and how it could be used to educate kids at schools,” Mr. Wren added. “It took almost a full year for Ryan to secure the donation of the bus and for us to put together our first conceptual sketch of the exterior and the interior requirements.”
Some 35 creatives from the Edwards team were involved in the project to remake the 30-foot bus into a greenhouse that could accommodate 20 students.
“Anytime we have a community project like this that is going to make an impact, we get extra motivation and excitement,” Mr. Wren told the QCBJ. “Knowing this will go out into the community and teach kids about plants is very cool. This is now a new platform for the Botanical Center to take their programming and education out into the community beyond their physical walls.”
Edwards’ contributions to the project include:
- Planning the interior and exterior of the bus.
- Designing, producing and installing exterior and interior graphics.
- Engineering, fabricating and installing countertop workstations for kids.
- Engineering, fabricating and installing mobile planting carts that lock down while in transport but can be wheeled off the bus at their destination.
- Engineering, fabricating and installing custom cabinetry for storing plants and tools and places for soil and waste.
- Gutting the bus to accommodate those additions.
- Fitting the bus for a new awning, back steps, sink and generator so it can be self-sufficient.