I found a great article on the horticulture training at Bidwell (the Drew Mathieson Center).
You wouldn’t expect to find Eden tucked away behind a UPS facility in Manchester. On a chilly January day painted over with Pittsburgh Gray, there isn’t much to inspire warmth at the Drew Mathieson Center’s acre-sized lot. If you didn’t already know the center’s greenhouse was housed in its strip-mall-like location amidst the grit of the city’s North Side, it would be easy to overlook.
And when you pass through them, the front doors seem like any other secure office building: You need a code to enter the lobby, where a receptionist sits behind a desk. But past her, and past a whiteboard with watering schedules and other notes, suddenly you’ve entered a green — and blue, and purple, and red — wonderland.
Inside, there’s a summery smell of tomato vines, still invigorating even if it lacks the intensity of a sun-drenched garden in July. And huge, primordial tomato vines — up to 60 feet long — snake toward the ceiling, looping back on themselves, with only small buckets keyed to nutrient lines connecting them to the earth. Bunches of glossy, plump green tomatoes hang teasingly from the vines.
No matter the weather outside, the greenhouse is always bursting with life: vegetables, ornamental plants — and the training center’s signature flower, the phalaenopsis orchid.
(…)
But as Strickland puts it, “Whoever said orchids had to be for rich people?”
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