New Greenhouse

The idea for an additional greenhouse came out of the successes of the Horticulture Program in the 2006-07 school year. That year the Horticulture Program had a highly motivated class of 17 students. They tripled their spring sales from the previous year and also started a number of projects to beautify the school grounds. The number of Master Gardener volunteers increased and they became more involved in the program, donating many hours. The City of Newberg also became more involved along with interest from the Chehalem Park and Recreation District.

In the 2007-08 school year the number of horticulture classes doubled and over 130 students took horticulture/greenhouse classes. Sales doubled from the previous year and we started growing hanging baskets for the Newberg Early Bird Rotary. Rotary then asked us to supply them with their entire fund raising hanging baskets (300), precipitating the need for another greenhouse. The Newberg Early Bird Rotary made a large monetary donation to start this process.

The City of Newberg City Council was very generous in waiving the permit fees for the Greenhouse project. The City of Newberg also donated a work crew with a backhoe and dump truck which removed the trees. Jim McMaster, Chehalem Park and Recreation District Director, helped make contact with Saunders Construction (a local contractor) who donated a crew of 5 along with a bulldozer, front end loader, packer, dump trucks and street sweeper to build our pad at no charge. The Newberg School District office staff assisted in writing a grant application to obtain funding for the materials; however were not a grant recipient. We looked for other funding sources and continued to look for used greenhouses to reduce costs. We were fortunate to find that Dayton's FFA program had the old McMinnville HS greenhouse and agreed to let us purchase the greenhouse at a reduced cost.

With the guidance of Chris Guntermann, Horticultural Services Inc., we expanded the original McMinnville house to fit our needs and came up with a price list of parts needed to complete a state of the art greenhouse. We rounded up as many funding sources as possible, came up with a budget and then made the choice of materials and upgrades we could afford and an estimate of construction costs to erect, plumb and wire the new greenhouse.

Construction on the frame and glazing started in Jan. of 2010. Brooks Construction/Darin Brooks, owner, was the winning bidder. This firm has been in the business 3 generations with many of the acres of greenhouses around the valley having been constructed by successive generations of the Brooks family. Construction was smooth and the horticulture classes were able to observe professionals at work. Thank you to Darin Brooks for speaking to the classes and for making this a good experience for all involved.