A Summer Greenhouse Camp was offered this year for the first time.  This course offers students a unique opportunity to work alongside researchers and biologists to learn about diversity within the plant kingdom.  The week-long class was sponsored in part by the UW Youth Academy, but would not have been possible without the teacher.  Katherine Glew Ph.D., Assistant Curator for UW Herbarium, spent over 25 years as a public and outreach school teacher, before continuing her education and career at the UW Department of Biology. Recently she received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to lead part of a new program called “Visit Biology.”  Her role will be to coordinate K-12 educational outreach programs for the greenhouse and medicinal herb garden.

“Most kids were there because they wanted to learn more about botany.  They were  quite knowledgeable about plants already,” said Glew.  “Some knew the genus and species of many plants, and one student was even growing his own orchid collection!”

Popular learning activities included medicinal herb leaf collecting and labeling.  Using a plant press in the greenhouse, and referencing the labels of different species of herbs from the garden, students created their own collection sheets, like the one pictured above by Nicholas Efhimiadis.  Students made “Baggie Gardens” to experiement with the effects of common household substances on seed germination. They also got to make solar and cloth prints of plants.  The cloth printing process was a bit disruptive, because it required hammering, but in the end the leaves were beautifully imprinted into the fabric, and then painted with mordant to fix the image and turn the imprints high contrast black.  

A related contribution from the P&E Miller Foundation will help fund a program for the greenhouse to provide public educational tours led by biology graduate student docents.  All in all this support has come together to create a wonderful opportunity for students of all ages to learn about the world of plants.