M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center

So many great things are happening in the MCMHEC! ESY students are learning how to cut freshly grown flowers, how to preserve them, and how to arrange them. Students dry and press flowers, water plants, plant seeds, the list goes on and on. 

The Horticulture Center is a place where students learn about loving the earth, being a part of a community, growing food, creating beauty, employment opportunities, and developing a passion. 

Each day we watched in excitement as the Horticulture Education Center came together. The above video in time-lapse shows some of the final days of construction. We are thrilled! 

M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center

Inspired by the Kappen Aquatic Center, along with our other previous environmental efforts, OSB's newly-constructed M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center is LEED Gold Certified under the new Version 4 LEED Building Design and Construction rating system and is also pursuing Zero Energy Building Certification status thanks to a generous grant from our partners at the Green Mountain Energy Sun Club.

The 1,780 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility features a fully accessible greenhouse with an attached headhouse containing a functional and accessible classroom space. Though greenhouses are by nature not energy efficient, we were ready to take on the challenge. Specifically, the design and construction of the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center accomplished the following sustainability-focused outcomes:

• By constructing the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center on the site of our former pool building, Overbrook School for the Blind helped to reduce the environmental impacts commonly associated with building on a new, undisturbed site;
• The roof of the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center's classroom space is lightly-colored, which helps reduce the heat island effect on site. By using a lightly-colored roof, we help lessen the impacts to plants and animals affected by temperature changes and promote better human health and comfort;
• Through the use of low-flow plumbing fixtures, as well as a rainwater harvesting system, the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center is projected to use 82% less water than a greenhouse of a similar size lacking these features. For comparison, that's nearly 9,000 gallons of water saved every year;
• The M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center is also tracking to achieve Zero Energy Building Certification status thanks to solar panels installed on the Nevil Field House located just across campus. Made possible by Green Mountain Energy, OSB installed a 50 kW Photovoltaic (PV) system on the roof of OSB's Nevil Fieldhouse to offset the energy used by the Horticulture Education Center. The PV system will generate more than 85,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) in the first year of production, with the hopes that after a year the Horticulture Education Center will be Zero Energy Building Certification, meaning that the panels will produce as much or more energy than it takes to run the Center; and,
• At Overbrook School for the Blind, we believe that indoor air quality important to everyone, big and small. We carried this forward with the designs for the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center by committing to low-Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) materials, which can cause short and long-term health effects like asthma and eye, nose and throat irritation. To reduce exposure to these contaminants, the materials central to the construction of the M. Christine Murphy Horticulture Education Center—paint, grout, and flooring—all meet strict requirements for VOC emissions and content.
• According to the EPA, the average individual sends 2.3 pounds of waste to landfills every day. Multiply that by the number of students at our school, our town, the US – that’s a lot of trash! Many materials that end up in landfills contain toxins that are eventually released into our environment. These toxins seep into our soil and groundwater and not only cause harm to our environment, but our health. A lot of this waste could be diverted from landfills through reuse or recycling. For the Greenhouse project, over 75% of the materials leftover from construction were sent to recycling facilities instead of landfills.