The Biology Teaching Greenhouse at Utah State University offers an ever changing landscape of vivid colors, distinctive plant forms, and remarkable biological diversity. From sculptural foliage and diverse plant forms to the bold blossoms of bird of paradise, the greenhouse invites students and visitors to experience plant life up close. At times, the scent of jasmine drifts through the air, while eye catching plants—such as the chenille plant with its fuzzy crimson blooms—encourage visitors to pause, observe, and explore.
The greenhouse is a vibrant space for learning, discovery, and immersive exploration of plant life, ecosystems, and biological growth. To maintain a safe and productive environment, access is reserved for scheduled courses, laboratories, and authorized academic activities, with opportunities to connect with the broader community through guided tours and outreach events.
Access: Please enter through the east entrance of the Geology Building
About the Greenhouse
The Biology Teaching Greenhouse is a student‑centered living laboratory supporting undergraduate and graduate instruction, research, and discovery within the College of Arts & Sciences at Utah State University. Through diverse living plant collections, terrariums, sustainable growing practices, and collaborative approaches to teaching and research, the greenhouse provides hands‑on learning experiences for thousands of students each year through coursework, tours, outreach, and academic programs.
Constructed in the mid‑1960s, the greenhouse has been a cornerstone of biological education at USU for more than half a century. In Utah’s highly variable climate, it offers a stable, year‑round environment that allows students and faculty to engage directly with living plant systems and explore plant diversity, evolution, ecology, and human–plant relationships.
Our Facilities
Teaching Integration & Course Support
The Biology Teaching Greenhouse directly supports instruction across the Biology curriculum, from introductory laboratories to upper‑division and graduate courses. Living plant collections are integrated into general biology, plant biology, genetics, ecology, systematics, pathology, tropical ecology, and special topics, providing hands‑on learning opportunities that reinforce core biological concepts across multiple levels of instruction.
Students engage with real plant diversity through activities such as:
- Observing adaptive traits across tropical, temperate, and desert systems
- Comparing major evolutionary lineages and transitions
- Exploring economic botany and culturally significant plants
- Examining carnivorous plants and species with rapid or unusual movements
- Investigating plant–insect interactions and ecological relationships
Each fall, the Biology Teaching Greenhouse supports an intensive week of Biology I laboratory instruction, engaging more than 800 students in an immersive, living learning environment. During this week, students rotate through the greenhouse’s themed rooms, with each space functioning as a focused teaching environment that emphasizes a distinct ecological or evolutionary concept. Using living plant collections, students investigate adaptation, structure–function relationships, and evolutionary strategies across diverse environments in ways not possible in a traditional classroom or laboratory.
Beyond Biology I, the greenhouse supports undergraduate and graduate instruction spanning general education, core biology laboratories, and advanced coursework in organismal biology, ecology, evolution, plant sciences, and insect biology.
Research Integrated Teaching & Honors Coursework
In addition to supporting the broader curriculum, the Biology Teaching Greenhouse serves as a dynamic site for research‑integrated and honors‑level coursework. In one representative example, an honors‑level introductory biology laboratory uses the greenhouse as a setting for student‑driven experimental design and data collection focused on plant–animal interactions. During the winter months, when ants are otherwise absent from the surrounding environment, the greenhouse provides the only location where active ant populations can be reliably found, making it a uniquely valuable and seasonally essential research setting. Students work with host plants grown and maintained by the greenhouse team under controlled conditions and collect ant populations that persist indoors during the winter to investigate how environmental factors influence interactions between insects and plants. These hands‑on projects guide students through hypothesis development, experimental testing, data analysis, and formal presentation of results, directly connecting classroom concepts to living biological systems.
Honors introductory biology students collect ants in the Teaching Greenhouse for a research‑integrated laboratory on plant–animal interactions.
(Photo Credits: Mary-Ann Muffoletto)
Operational & Instructional Support
The greenhouse manages daily operations that support both introductory and advanced laboratories, including plant propagation, maintenance of teaching collections, and preparation of plant materials for courses in plant physiology, systematics, pathology, ecology, genetics, and related fields. These operations ensure reliable access to healthy, diverse plant material for instruction, research, and experiential learning across the Biology curriculum.
In addition to plant collections and laboratory preparation, the headhouse space supports student learning through educational posters and reference materials displayed throughout the area. These visual resources reinforce key plant biology topics—including plant modifications, structural and functional diversity, plant coloration, classification of fruits and flowers, floral specialization, and propagation techniques—providing students with opportunities for review, reinforcement, and informal study before and after greenhouse‑based instruction.