Noelridge Greenhouses in Cedar Rapids celebrating 50th anniversary

CEDAR RAPIDS — A warm garden oasis at Noelridge Park that grows thousands of plants each year for Cedar Rapids’ public spaces is celebrating its 50th anniversary throughout 2022.

The Noelridge Greenhouses turned 50 at the end of 2021, so the city of Cedar Rapids’ Parks and Recreation Department is marking this milestone monthly by sharing details of the greenhouse’s many programs, with a special event to come later this year.

Social media posts on the department’s Facebook page and articles on the city’s website, cedar-rapids.org, will cover topics such as the contributions of volunteers, how staff and volunteers create gardens at Noelridge Park in northeast Cedar Rapids and how the public can enjoy the greenhouses year-round.

The celebration will culminate in an Aug. 12 event still being planned to offer greenhouse tours, potentially have yard games for kids and more in hopes of drawing the public to the greenhouse.

The Parks Division has been producing flowers for the city’s public spaces since 1930. The first greenhouses were built at Bever Park as three 20-by-80-foot glass houses attached to the east side of the maintenance building.

The five Noelridge greenhouses opened on Dec. 27, 1971. They remain open today, available for visitors year-round from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The building features the working greenhouse where thousands of annuals and perennials are grown each spring, as well as a botanical garden that includes tropical plants, such as a banana tree, a cactus garden and an orchid collection.

It’s full of colors, from green agave cactuses to the pink flowers that bloom on a tropical vine called the Bougainvillea — a plant that survives from the Bever Park greenhouse and was moved once the Noelridge facility opened in 1971.

Main events are the annual Easter and Mother's Day Showcases, where the public can buy plants grown here, but those have not been held in-person since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The city currently is planning to hold the Easter and Mother’s Day Showcases at the greenhouse in person this year, and will have guidelines for social distancing and possibly a mask requirement.

The online showcases have sold over 2,000 plants.

“There weren't a lot of other things going on to bring in some money for the city, and so any little bit helped and people were still able to get the plants that they wanted,” said Lori Farmer, the greenhouse lead. She is one of two staffers fully dedicated to maintaining the greenhouse plants and hosting events, with the help of volunteers and seasonal workers.

Each year, the greenhouse grows between 40,000 and 64,000 flowers and plants that eventually are planted at public spaces including parks, golf courses, The Eastern Iowa Airport and in planters downtown.

With COVID-19, that number has hovered around 45,000 to 48,000 plants each year as fewer people have been able to help maintain the plants with social-distancing protocols, Farmer said, but she hopes to get that number back up.

“That's something that people don't realize that we do, is go all over town, basically put the color and beautification all around,” Farmer said. “It's not just here at Noelridge.”

Volunteers are a major help to the two greenhouse employees, Farmer said, as they assist with showcases, tours and gardening duties. They are not scheduled and are free to come in as they wish, and most help in the cold weather months before tending to their own gardens again in the spring.

“They do a lot of stuff that we can't do anymore with just two of us, and so they have filled in a very large gap for us,” Farmer said.

It’s not common for municipalities to have city-owned greenhouses, Farmer said, so it’s “amazing” to have one running this long in Cedar Rapids. Dubuque and Des Moines each have greenhouses, Farmer said, but those are operated by volunteers or different friends groups.

Farmer said she’s been asked “if we were trying to hide a gem.”

“Not a lot of people in Cedar Rapids know that they can come into the greenhouse,” Farmer said. “A lot of them know we have the gardens outside.”

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