Members of the public interested in receiving seedlings or trees got a chance to learn more about the Shand Greenhouse and what it does during an open house held on Sunday afternoon.
The greenhouse, which was built in 1991, is located next to the Shand Power Station and helps to mitigate the station's impact on the environment.
The greenhouse and the power station alternate open houses every two years.
"We run a public program so that landowners can apply to us for free seedlings and we do that on an annual basis, so in May we'll be shipping out some of the stock to a few hundred landowners across Saskatchewan," said greenhouse manager Bruce Hesselink. "We also do some environmental programs with environmental groups and we do some growing for SaskPower projects as well. When we impact the environment, Shand Greenhouse is part of the answer to rehabilitating the environment."
Two speakers were featured at the open house, with one giving tips on how to save electricity and money in the home, and the other warning of the dangers of planting trees near power lines, which can result in the tree becoming a conductor of electricity and posing a safety hazard to those on the ground.
Hesselink said the turnout for the open house was smaller than expected, although he added "we have hundreds of people come throughout the year, so this is just a more formal opportunity for that. After today, we'll get busy packaging last year's crop for our customers. We'll clear everything out and bring on some more people and get those orders out throughout Saskatchewan."
Hesselink said the greenhouse has between 20 and 30 varieties, which are grown in two separate crops.
"This is really half of what we would grow in a year. These will be put outside to finish off and as soon as we put these outside when the weather gets decent, we'll sow another crop and double it up. We get about half a million seedlings a year that way."
All of the seedlings are spoken for this year, with the deadline to apply passing on March 15.
The demand for seedlings at Shand has grown since the recent closure of the tree nursery at Indian Head, Hesselink said.
"I think people are generally looking in a lot of different places for seedlings. That facility provided free trees and seedlings across the Prairies, so that's going to have an impact on those people who want to do some environmental projects.
"We'll never be able to touch that demand, that was probably 10 times bigger than what we are, but it's definitely increased the interest in the program and the competition for our seedlings. But as you can see, we've got so many square feet and we've got so many days to grow trees, so we're kind of maxed out right now."
