It’s 15 degrees outside, and stiff winds urge me not to make the trek from my house to the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center — but I hunker down, zip my calf-length puffer coat up past my chin and persist. Luckily, as soon as the elevator doors open to reveal the fourth floor, I’m hit with a blast of warm air. I drop my coat on the chair just outside the greenhouse and peer through the glass windows at the jungle that awaits me.
After spending most of my winterim at home in Florida, where any temperature below 70 degrees calls for winter attire, it is comforting to be enveloped in the warmth of the Life Sciences Greenhouse. Like a rare orchid, I appreciate some climate-controlling during the colder months.
When I talked to greenhouse manager Terry Barry, I realized that I wasn’t alone in seeking warmth in the Life Sciences Center.
“We do find that the first-years that find [the greenhouse] most quickly are the ones from southern areas or warmer areas that are really missing that temperature when winter starts getting closer,” Barry said.
When most of Hanover is a wintry white and gray, the greenhouse remains reliably green. I visited the greenhouse to see one prized area — the orchid collection — where bursts of yellow, pink and purple bloom.
The first of the treasured flowers, which are now collectively called the Brout collection, were donated by Alan Brout ’51 in 1996. Brout, who is now 95 years old, has spent the last 30 years “finding new and unusual orchids to bring to the collection, usually twice a year,” according to the Life Sciences Greenhouse website.
Brout said his passion for orchids began when he “was in college, and a neighbor of [his] had a greenhouse.”
“I was intrigued by the Cattleya orchids he grew, and I’ve been in love with orchids ever since,” he said.
According to Brout, his personal collection began after he graduated from Dartmouth. He started to grow orchids under lights in his basement but soon expanded to a “10 by 15-foot greenhouse in [his] backyard.” The collection quickly grew into a second greenhouse, also located in his backyard.
When Brout and his family began spending the winter months in California, they were left wondering what to do with nearly 1,000 rare orchids, Barry said. At the time, Dartmouth only housed two orchids — so Brout “decided that he wanted to donate his entire collection” and set up an endowment for the caretaking of the plants, according to Barry.
Now, the greenhouse is home to an extensive collection of rare orchids. According to Barry, there are more than “900 different plants, species, hybrids and genera” between the warm and cool orchid rooms.
It requires a team to take care of an orchid collection as large as Dartmouth’s. Barry said she works with assistant greenhouse manager Dana Ozimek and six undergraduate employees to manage the space.
Student employee Garrett Althausen ’25 said working in the greenhouse and ensuring all the plants are cared for is “intense,” requiring six to 10 hours of work per week.
“The orchids are the group of plants that require the most attention,” he said. “They require a minimum of biweekly fertilization … Some groups of orchids in the greenhouse need to be watered daily [because] they’re at high risk of drying out.”
According to Barry, from 1996 to 2011, the collection was housed in the now-demolished Gilman building, which once housed the biological sciences department.
When the collection moved to its current home in the Life Sciences Center in 2011, its new residence included a “cool” orchid room, simulating a cloud forest. While the tropical orchids thrive in a separate, more traditional greenhouse room, the genera of the cloud forest orchids thrive in slightly cooler conditions. According to Barry, the cloud forest orchids wouldn’t survive in the regular greenhouse rooms, as they require especially high humidity and must “stay within the 50 to 70 degree temperature range.”
While most of the greenhouse is air-cooled and temperature regulated by shades that trap in heat during the winter and release it during the summer, the cool orchid room is the only one that is “actively cooled,” Barry explained. Throughout the year, the staff also adjusts conditions in the warm and cool orchid rooms to reflect the natural seasonal shifts that occur in the orchids’ natural habitats.
“[The cool orchid room] is actually going through its winter dormancy,” Barry said. “The ‘rainfall’ in the winter is not plentiful, but it’s always going to be misty.” Misty it is, as my suede boots turned from a cinnamon color to that of dark coffee while observing the room’s occupants.
With such a detailed routine for the orchids, it’s clear that this collection has been treasured both by Brout and its current caretakers. When asked how he caught the “bug” for orchids, he dryly replied, “First of all, never mention bugs and orchids in the same sentence.”
The rare orchids are indeed highly sensitive to a pest called thrips, which the greenhouse staff must constantly battle, according to Barry. Barry said the staff members rely on “predatory and parasitic mites … that hatch out over time” to combat the pests.
Barry showed me some of the collection, turning me to what I now claim as my favorite orchid, of the genus Dracula. These plants hang upside down, with its “lip petal” — or “landing pad for a pollinator” — sporting “that little bumpy texture like the underside of a mushroom,” according to Barry. In fact, many of the orchids use different forms of mimicry to attract their pollinators.
The Dracula was just one example of the stunning array of orchids in the Brout collection. According to Althausen, having such breadth is “really valuable.”
“Just simply to have that much biodiversity conserved — it’s amazing on the small scale,” he said. “We’re [an almost] 7,000-person college, and we have almost 1,000 individual rare orchids. A rare orchid for every seventh person — that’s unbelievable.”
The rare orchid collection is a haven for plant education, conservation and appreciation. If you’re interested in seeing a Vanilla planifola — yes, the vanilla bean plant is an orchid — or your heating is on the fritz, the greenhouse is a great place to warm up this winter.
