Joliet Junior College gives tour of high-tech greenhouse facility

JOLIET – A group of college officials on Tuesday were shown how Joliet Junior College invests in green technology and sustainable practices with its greenhouse facility.

The JJC Greenhouse Facility is the first of its kind certified in green building design standards in Illinois and the first such facility at a community college nationwide, JJC officials have said.

The group gathered around horticulture professor Fredric Miller as he gave a tour of the facility, constructed in 2009.

“It’s pretty much state of the art in terms of sustainability,” Miller said.

The tour is part of a monthlong series of events hosted by JJC students and staff to recognize sustainability, which ties together environmental concerns with economics and equity.

Maria Anna Rafac, a professor and JJC sustainability coordinator, has said JJC is one of the few community colleges whose governing board has a sustainability policy.

Miller showed visitors several greenhouse rooms inside the facility that had different temperatures and plants growing.

The JJC Greenhouse Facility was designed to use 40 percent less water and be 14 percent more energy efficient than a conventional building, and comes with ebb-and-flow benches that allow plants to absorb water as needed and then collect excess water to store for later use.

“Space is critical. … Every square footage of a greenhouse, you want to maximize,” Miller said.

Miller also gave a tour of the horticulture lab outside the facility, which has raised garden beds, smaller indoor facilities, a vineyard and high fences.

“That’s to keep out our four-legged Bambi friends because they would destroy everything in here,” he said.

Miller said everything at the facility is kept as organic as possible, noting compost that comes from dead ash trees.

Students who come to the facility are “very hands on,” he said. They would rather learn by doing.

According to JJC, the college’s horticulture students study sustainability trends in fields such as urban forestry, floral design, greenhouse management, landscape contracting and others.

Miller next showed the many breeds of trees that have been planted at the Dr. William M. Zales Arboretum across from the greenhouse facility. The 11-acre arboretum was started in 1975 and the concept for it originated from Zales, a JJC botany professor and conservation activist, who became the namesake of the area after he retired in 1999.

The plants have been arranged according to their evolutionary ancestry and taxonomic relationships, with the most primitive on the east end of the arboretum.

One of the trees Miller noted was the ginkgo tree, which he said is becoming more popular in urban areas because of their resilience in harsh conditions compared with other trees.

“It’s a really tough tree,” he said.