Garden Center | Going Green Gets Easier
The Green Learning Station, which is opening Aug. 20, will focus on teaching city residents about composting, catching falling stormwater for reuse and how to garden anywhere.
“We wanted to create a new education space where people could learn about nature in an environmentally friendly way,” says Ryan Mooney-Bullock, program manger for the Green Learning Station.
The station, which is located at 2715 Reading Road in Avondale, is free to attend and is located entirely outdoors.
“Where our parking lot is we had an abandoned gas station, so we decided to transform it into the Green Learning Station,” says Betsy Townsend, board member for the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati.
With the learning station outside, visitors can come to the station anytime, even when the Civic Garden Center is closed. The station will have a variety of different displays set up to teach people everything from container gardening to how to install and grow a green roof to different ways to grow plants when someone is dealing with limited space.
“We will have displays setup with signage so people can see how they can do these different things at home,” Townsend says. “It will be very self-explanatory, so even if you do not go on a guided tour, you will understand how you can do some of these things at home.”
One of the interesting things the center will be demonstrating is how to create a green roof for your home or business. A green roof, which is a roof that is partially or completely covered with vegetation, has become increasingly popular in the past decade.
Some of the green roofs the learning station has on display include one with 12 inches of soil that can grow large vegetables like corn or large plants, one with 4 inches of soil that can grow shallow-rooted plants like lavender, thyme and chives, and a tray system roof where plants in trays sit on a roof.
“Green roofs are interesting because they are made of the same things a regular roof is made of, but they also have greenery on them,” Mooney-Bullock says. “However, compared to a regular roof, they last a lot longer.”
Also, the learning station is working on a project that monitors how quickly storm water runs through different pavements. The center has six different forms of pavement setup and is analyzing how fast storm
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