Greenhouse

The Greenhouse at Landry Park is a partnership between Vermont Garden Network and the City of Winooski Recreation and Parks department.

It is a heated propagation house, an outdoor classroom, and a community space where we center our climate resilience, food sovereignty, and seedkeeping work.

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Upcoming workshop

Registration opens December 1! 
Please visit our Workshop page for a detailed description on the Early Bird Intensive.

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Our First Two Years in the Greenhouse

From 2025 to 2026, we’ve welcomed 500+ visitors, hosted 60+ workshop participants, and grown over 12,000 seedlings. Here are some highlights from our work in the greenhouse:

• At least 20% of the seedlings we grow are culturally meaningful crops from the African, Asian, and Latin American diasporas. We grow them in response to community requests from Winooski residents and to share during our garden education programming with the Janet S. Munt Family Room. You can learn more about some of the crops we start in the greenhouse by looking through our Cultural Crop Guide.
• It takes a village to run a community-oriented greenhouse. We coordinate a skilled team including: a greenhouse manager to oversee production, an assistant responsible for daily watering, garden educators to facilitate workshops, seasonal apprentices to do the behind the seasons magic like sanitizing reusable pots, a community liaison to bridge language barriers with Bhutanese gardeners, and even a volunteer snow-shoveler in winter!
• We have 14 pallet tables inside the greenhouse and 6 raised beds for in-ground cultivation. From the beginning, we envisioned the Greenhouse at Landry Park as a year-round operation and a multi-functional space. When we are finished seed starting in early summer, we remove pallet tables from half the greenhouse and transition to growing crops in raised beds on that half of the greenhouse.
• We honor the seed-to-seed cycle and we steward a large quantity of seeds. If you are looking for seeds, let us know, we always have more to share. In 2026, in the six raised beds, we grew a handful of culturally meaningful crops that require an extra long growing season to produce mature seed for our seed saving work. In partnership with New Farms for New Americans, we’ve been stewarding a Community Seed Bank with over 30+ varieties of culturally meaningful seeds.  Greenhouse-grown seeds we were able to add to our collection in 2026 include: smooth luffa, green hyacinth bean, Himalayan dalle khorsani peppers, Cajun jewel okra, Japanese indigo, and Palestinian molokhia.
• We’ve designed creative watering systems to meet our needs with limited access to running water.  The City of Winooski turns on water access from mid-April to late October. But that timeline doesn’t entirely overlap with watering needs in a greenhouse. Necessity is the mother of invention. We have two 275 gallon cubes to store water overwinter and use in March and April (they do freeze into enormous solid ice cubes, but we cover them with black tarps to thaw just in time for our spring seeding needs). We use an electric pump to send water from the cubes into the greenhouse to be able to use watering wands and gently water recently seeded trays.  The six raised beds are connected to a gravity-fed drip irrigation system that uses water stored in rain barrels.
• To the extent possible, we rely on reusable trays and pots to reduce our plastic footprint. Thanks to funding from Northeast SARE, we were able to purchase several rigid plastic air pruning trays that have been a delight to use. We also have a collection of soil blockers (although, to be honest, we find soil blocking to be extremely labor intensive!). We are mindful of all the materials we use and we purchase locally when possible (Vermont Compost Company’s Fort Vee is our preferred potting soil).
• We have a busy calendar of community events we host in the Greenhouse. We kick off the season with our Greenhouse Spring Opening on the weekend closest to the Spring Equinox (late March). Events we’ve hosted include: seed cleaning work parties, plant donations, service learning projects for students, garlic planting demonstrations, seed giveaways, and more. On occasion we also meet in the Greenhouse for our weekly staff meeting – the Greenhouse is the closest VGN has to an office space.
• Enjoy a gallery of some of our favorite photos from 2025-2026! If you’d like to visit in person, please contact carolina@vtgardens.org 

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Greenhouse Grand Opening – March 2025

We opened our doors and welcomed over 150 community members to the Greenhouse Grand Opening on March 22, 2025! The day was a beautiful celebration of community, with local organizations, City of Winooski employees, public officials, and neighbors all coming together to mark this exciting new chapter.  From the moment the doors opened, attendees had the opportunity to choose from thousands of donated seed packets, each one destined for a local gardener ready to grow their own crops. Within just a few hours, attendees helped seed nine trays of onions, shallots, and scallions—about 800 plants—which will go on to feed our community for months to come. From toddlers to experienced gardeners, everyone played a part in sowing these crops for the benefit of all.

Throughout the day, there was laughter, learning, and plenty of cheddar and chive biscuits to go around. We’re deeply grateful to our sponsors and partners— Gardener’s Supply Company, The Skinny Pancake, City of Winooski Recreation & Parks, and Vermont Foodbank—for their support in making this event possible. The grand opening was just the beginning of an exciting journey, and we look forward to growing together with our community in the months and years ahead.

   

Event Photography: Annalisa Madonia

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The Background Story: How the Greenhouse at Landry Park Came to Be

This project materializes a new partnership between Vermont Garden Network and City of Winooski. We extend much gratitude to the grant support from Vermont Foodbank and to the contractors at Vine Ripe for making this dream a reality.

Here is a little background on the greenhouse structure: Julie from Red Wagon Plants, in partnership with New Farms for New Americans, were the first to erect the greenhouse structure at the O’Brien Center in Winooski almost a decade ago. A few years later, NFNA passed along the greenhouse management to the City of Winooski, and for several years it functioned as a community greenhouse where residents rented table space for starting their seeds. Consecutive years of vandalism to the greenhouse structure and property theft forced the City of Winooski to close down the greenhouse.

In spring of 2024 stars aligned and the City of Winooski reached out to VGN after hearing that we were searching for a location to build a greenhouse. We met with VineRipe and defined what it would take, logistically and financially, to relocate and reskin the greenhouse. A heroic group of volunteers and staff cleaned up the site at the O’Brien Center in preparation for the big move.

In early June, a tarp was laid down to mark the footprint of the new greenhouse at the Landry Park Community Gardens, adjacent to the Myers Memorial Pool. We could not have imagined a more ideal location! By mid August, the greenhouse had been reassembled and skinned with new plastic. We spent fall and early winter of 2024 planning our inaugural greenhouse activities. The Grand Opening of the Greenhouse at Landry Park was celebrated in March 2025.

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Growing thousands of plants for our garden community will only be possible with support from our community. Various contractors, electricians, volunteers, consultants, and many farmer friends have advised this project. We invite YOU to help us GROW by contributing to our Annual Fund.

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