Amelia Pratt, currently a junior at the Tupper Lake Middle-High School, presented her idea for a greenhouse at the Town Hall Monday afternoon. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)

TUPPER LAKE — Amelia Pratt, a junior at Tupper Lake Middle-High School, has an idea to help local gardeners. Although funding for that project is uncertain at the moment, she took her pitch to Town Hall.

Pratt presented her idea for a community greenhouse to Town Clerk Mary Kay Strack Monday afternoon. Pratt made her entreaty to the town of Tupper Lake because of her desire to integrate the greenhouse with the Tupper Lake Community Garden, which is owned by the town and allows gardeners to rent a plot for the season, which the renter is then in charge of.

While getting building approval is the most pressing step, Pratt also approached the town for possible assistance with grant writing. Pratt said that if approved to build the greenhouse, its ultimate construction cost will hinge on how large it is allowed to be, which she said she was flexible on.

In addition to pursuing grant funding, Pratt noted that several community members have reached out to her, offering to make private donations to help the project along. Although her initial source of funding was cut, Pratt was considering several avenues to keep on advancing the project.

“I was originally supposed to get funding through the Wild Center’s Youth Climate Program, but unfortunately, that fell through,” Pratt said. “So now, I’m going to try to apply for grants, and if I don’t get those, I’m going to fundraise other ways and then fund it myself.”

Strack, along with Town Planner and Assessor Jessica Eggsware, handle the town of Tupper Lake’s grant writing for various projects. Strack said the two of them were happy to meet with Pratt to provide advice from their experience writing grants, but emphasized that submitting any grants for the greenhouse would need to be completed by Pratt and required continued efforts on her part.

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Early feedback

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While Strack thought it was a great idea, and appreciated Pratt’s initiative, she said that numerous steps and approvals would need to be satisfied before it could be authorized by the town. These include getting approval from Paul O’Leary, who oversees the community garden, as well as the town Board, which needs to sign off on any structures going up on town-owned land.

She also said that if the project is approved on town land, its building would have to adhere to a set of town policies.

“Because it’s on town land, we have a procurement policy that we have to follow,” she said. “Although the funds aren’t coming from necessarily us, we have to follow that also. There are a lot of things in play here. We could get it built, but those are just some of the things that I’m throwing out there with working with a municipality.”

Strack emphasized that for these to be given, there would likely need to be a long-term management plan for the greenhouse for its approval to be considered. This, she said, is to ensure it doesn’t fall into disrepair once Pratt graduates from high school.

“We also need to think about ‘the after,'” Strack said. “You’re leaving for college (in fall 2026). Who’s going to maintain it? We have to think about the structure through the wintertime. It’s going to have to be sustainable through heavy snow loads.”

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Greenhouse idea origins

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Pratt realized the impact that a community greenhouse could have when she was volunteering at the Tupper Lake Public Library recently, helping to plant seeds for the community garden.

She said library staff members and other project volunteers were planting seeds in small plastic containers, then taking those home to provide a climatically conducive environment there. While this was feasible on a small scale, Pratt realized the community didn’t have a greenhouse, and if it did, it would allow for early-season seed germination for the community garden on a larger and more efficient basis.

“Greenhouses are very important to have for many reasons,” she said. “Our season here is really short. We’re in (U.S. Department of Agriculture Hardiness) Zone 4, which means it’s really hard to get plants in the ground, and then you only have a very short window of growth, so having a greenhouse here will extend our grow season.”

Pratt, who is a member of the TLCSD Green Team and the Wild Center’s Youth Climate Program, hoped that as the project progressed, there would be interest from current community gardeners. She thought some gardeners would take advantage of the greenhouse and begin germinating their crops earlier in the season. While Pratt hopes to eventually build a greenhouse at the community garden for direct access, she was “very open to any other options that may be available.’ “My hope is that it will get more people interested in gardening because of how accessible, I hope, it will be,” she said. “People will be able to learn about sustainability in farming, which is something that I’m pretty passionate about.”