BUCKHANNON – The City of Buckhannon’s new greenhouse will be in use for this upcoming planting season.

City horticulturist Dixie Green said the new greenhouse is being constructed by the city street department’s new headquarters on Mud Lick Road.

“They’re working on it in between their projects, so we had to wait until they got some free time, but they’ve got the arches up and everything and now they’re putting all the hardware on, and I’ve got the covering coming probably next week,” Green said. “We intend to have it fully operational for the season.”

Previously, the city grew their flowers at Buckhannon-Upshur High School but recently decided to purchase their own space.

“The greenhouse at the high school is very old. The plastic that goes on greenhouses aren’t supposed to last forever, so we were already discussing improving the greenhouse up there and then the agriculture teacher [at the high school] told me he would like to have the extra space, so we decided it made more sense to have a greenhouse nearby, instead of me driving all the way up there,” Green said. “We decided to put the money into our own greenhouse because we’ll always have a flower program.”

Green grows all the flowers that can be seen in the planters, baskets and beds around town in the spring.

“The first thing I want to get started is probably going to be centerpieces for the big round planters; I hope to be able to plant some cannas,” Green said. “We didn’t have them last year, and with COVID and everything, there were a bunch of shipping problems, so I couldn’t get what I would have normally put in our planters, but I’ll be getting those this year, so those will be the first things to get started.”

Green also plans to plant new trees in Jawbone Park to replace some of the old, rotted ones that currently reside there.

“They decided to go with oaks and honey locusts, which are native here and there are already some oaks in Jawbone and they’ve done really well in the past,” Green said. “We’re trying to put trees in there that are going to be the sturdiest for that area. It’s very wet there, but at the same time, when we have the droughts, it’s extremely hot, so we’re just trying to get stuff in there that has a lot of shade and is going to thrive well, so we don’t have to replace them in a few years.”

Her overarching goal for the 2022 spring is to improve the beds already in place.

“My goal this year is to clean up a lot of the beds that we have, replace pavers and just get them looking a little bit nicer,” Green said. “The other thing I want to do is cut down on open space. We have a few beds that are just super open, and I want to do some better landscaping in those beds, so they look a little more appealing.”

Some of the flowers that will make a return include petunias, begonias and lantanas.

“I use petunias in almost every planter,” Green said. “I really like the bright vibrant bubblegum pink petunias as well as the kind of harder to find Galaxy Star Petunias, which look like a night sky – they’re dark purple with little white specks, and then the key lime Petunias, which are bright yellow and green; people seem to like those. The rose begonias were really popular last year. I didn’t do a ton of them; they’re basically little begonias, but they’ve got these big beautiful rose heads, and I had those planted down by Stone Tower. I’ll probably do lantanas again this year. People seem to find that interesting, and they have a really pretty smell.”