St. Louis students are about to get a taste of what the Shaw neighborhood has been growing for years, thanks to a forthcoming state-of-the-art education center designed as a hub for agricultural education.
It marks a milestone in a multi-year fundraising effort and the crown jewel of programming at Green House Venture, a St. Louis–based organization with a mission to “educate, excite, and equip an inclusive population of elementary students to pursue a sustainable world through a hands-on program in bio-science and urban agriculture.”
The center will break ground on September 4, with a target opening of fall 2026. Fittingly, the center’s design will emphasize sustainability and accessibility, from solar panels to high-efficiency heating and cooling and plumbing systems to rain barrels and a rain garden.
“The center will enable us to expand our program beyond just our current neighborhood to the city that we serve and to take our program to other schools in the region and even around the country,” says Craig Workman, Green House Venture spokesperson.
The new center will offer opportunities for students to engage in innovative approaches, such as aquaponics, rooftop gardening, and vertical farming. “It’s one thing to plant a garden outside—that, in and of itself, has been a really big part of what we do with students, just so they can understand what nutritious foods are and where they come from. But to be able to watch them year-round in their own neighborhood offers so much potential for these kids to grow up and hopefully have an interest in becoming involved in plant science, perhaps as a career or just a personal interest,” Workman says. “Seeing is believing.”
Since 2016, three Shaw neighborhood schools have participated in Green House Venture’s programming: St. Margaret of Scotland School, Center Cross Academy (previously known as Tower Grove Christian Academy), and Mullanphy Investigative Center. Lafayette Preparatory Academy joined the group in 2024. They will be among the first to utilize the center when it opens.
Likewise, a range of area school systems came together to create Green House Venture’s educational programming. “I think we’re an example of what other organizations could do if they collaborate,” he says. “As we get fewer students and fewer schools in the city, how can the existing systems [work together] better?… It’s about creating an educational opportunity, at no cost to them, that would otherwise not be available to their kids.”
The curriculum at the education center will primarily focus on grades 4–8, as the Green House team believes it’s the perfect time to introduce and inspire the topics to students. “Kids are curious at that age,” Workman explains. “And kids can be very intimidated by the notion of science, but when you’re young, in grade school, being able to see it helps remove some of that perception that this might be more difficult than they can handle. It’s an age where they can overcome that fear.”
Discover fun things to do with the family
Subscribe to the St. Louis Family newsletter for family-friendly things to do and news for local parents, sent every Monday.
The data that Green House has been gathering reinforces its hypothesis. “There are a number of students in high school now who attended one of these elementary schools and went through our program,” Workman says. “One wants to become a meteorologist because they learned [through Green House] the impact the weather has on plants. [And so many of our other high schools] are showing strong interests in pursuing careers that involve some type of science or bioscience plant science… I think full success will really only be known long-term, when some of our students go on to become employed somewhere like the Danforth Plant Science Center or Bayer.”
Green House Ventures hopes that students will also connect what they grow in the greenhouses or the gardens with the choices they make in their own kitchens and lives. The students take a large portion of what they grow at the center home with them, and the rest is donated to Operation Food Search. By showing students where nutritious foods come from—and that they can plant, grow, cook, and serve such items at their house—Workman says the organization aims to contribute to community wellness on a larger scale.
“This is by no means a comprehensive guide to nutritious eating for the rest of your life, but this is a way to introduce kids and their families to things that are good for their bodies, their wallet, and their quality of life,” Workman says.
The education center represents a major investment that Green House Venture is making in education and the community as a whole. But the work doesn’t end there. “One of the things that we want to do both with our education center and terrace garden is to make it available to people in the community to come in and to learn,” Workman says. “So if you live in the Shaw neighborhood or somewhere else in the city, once we’re up and running, we will have opportunities for anybody to come in if they want to learn a little bit about rooftop farming or something, there will be educational opportunities for the public to do that.”
Green House Venture will be utilizing the new center to continue its partnership with the University of Missouri–St. Louis. UMSL researchers began a pollination study this year (following a previous study by St. Louis University that was completed in 2024) to see if a habitat can be established along an interstate (such as I-44) that’s healthy enough for bees to pollinate and then to pollinate the center’s adjacent food plots, which students will be growing.
“We’re finding that a tomato plant that would normally get only four or six tomatoes in the course of the season is instead getting around 20 tomatoes on the plant,” says Workman. “We’re still researching, but that can have a larger impact on food supply right here in the city.”
To support Green House Venture’s mission, visit its website.
