The Quad City Botanical Center (QCBC) is on the move.
No, the priceless facility at 2525 4th Ave., Rock Island, is not going anywhere, but it’s partnering with MetroLink to create a new mobile classroom – the Plant Discovery Bus.
Ryan Wille, QCBC executive director, said recently that the idea was born out of an effort to increase the number of people they can teach about plants and the environment each year.
That number for calendar year 2023 was just over 28,000, with roughly 10,000 of those being school-aged youth engaging in formal field trip programming.
“Conservative projections show that we can increase that yearly total to roughly 40,000 per year within five years of launching the Plant Discovery Bus, with roughly 20,000 of those being school-aged youth engaging in hands-on, formal programming,” Wille said of converting a Metro bus.
After careful inspection of how the center was delivering its mission, “we found that many schools and other organizations face challenges when working to find a way to get their students or learners here to our facility,” the director said. “This can be related to cost, the simple seasonality of a garden field trip, transportation logistics and other challenges that our QC educators face.”
The Botanical Center examined how it could bring programming to the community without losing any of the quality of an onsite greenhouse tour and planting program — while also making it something exciting and unique.
“We decided that turning a bus into a classroom on wheels would be a great first step in making our programming more accessible for anyone in the QC,” Wille said. “Based on what I could find from other members of the American Public Garden Association, a partnership like ours here in the QC is the first of its kind in the country.”
QCBC reached out to MetroLink about a year ago on how to marry their respective missions, to help the environment and teach people about it.
“The immediate interest from the amazing people at MetroLink further proves their commitment to sustainability and being a good neighbor here in the QC,” Wille said. “After they learned about what we wished to do, they quickly came up with a plan that would allow us to recycle a bus from their fleet that was scheduled to be replaced.
“Their vehicles are meticulously maintained and the bus we are converting has years of life left in it for our purposes,” he said.
“The bus itself will reflect a classroom on wheels, designed to deliver some of our most popular programming, which has been designed to meet the learning standards of curriculum in both Illinois and Iowa,” Wille said.
It will have climate control, functioning plumbing, planting stations, storage carts, a bus-side learning area, shade and all the tools needed inside to deliver programming that meets quality standards.
“In addition, every single program we deliver will include information about MetroLink and how this project serves their mission as well,” he noted.
“We are so grateful to all of the people who made this possible and without the generous partnership from MetroLink, our Plant Discovery Bus would simply not be feasible in the form that we are able to deliver with their involvement in this project,” Wille added.
“Metro is excited to partner with the QCBC to expand the environmental mission of both organizations by building the Quad Cities’ first educational mobile greenhouse,” said Jennifer Hirsch, Metro’s manager of administration.
“The donated Metro vehicle will be completely transformed into an educational center that will reach community youth in the Quad Cities, and will include transportation messaging supporting our vision to promote sustainability and mobility in our region,” she said.
For more information on QCBC, click HERE.
