One of the missions of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay is to teach — about plants, horticulture, garden design, the environment and more.

The new Bosarge Family Education Center, which will have its official opening Friday, will be a place for programs, but also will be a teaching tool in itself.

Additional Photos

The Bosarge Family Education Center will open Friday at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. Its rooftop solar panels are part of its state-of-the art energy efficiency. Photos by Barbara Freeman

The Education Center’s high ceilings were designed to provide good acoustics for concerts there.

“This building will help educate the public,” said Dick O’Connor of Edgecomb, vice president of the gardens’ board of directors, who has been involved in the project from the start. “Not everyone is going to spend millions of dollars on a building like this, but when people are building a cottage or a home, they can take aspects from this. I mean, how many people build a house and don’t even face it toward the sun.”

The building is a net-zero LEED Platinum building, which means it is built to the highest energy-efficiency and environmental standards and will create more energy than it uses.

Maureen Heffernan, executive director of the gardens, said the idea central to the design of the building was a bit whimsical but also sensible.

“The idea was to think as if a plant designed a building,” she said. “It really is similar to a plant. It gets its energy from the sun. It collects water to be used later, to flush the toilets in our case. It recycles things and is energy efficient. It is kind of fun, especially for a garden, to build a building as if it were a plant.”

The 8,000-square-foot building has 135 photovoltaic panels covering the entire south-facing roof and another 102 panels on what were tennis courts nearby. Any excess electricity created will be sent to a grid for use in other parts of the complex or stored for later.

The foot-thick walls have an R value (a measure of insulating effectiveness) of 40, and the roof has an R value of 60. It has triple-paned glass, and the window shades are designed so that even when closed to block the sun in winter, they will let in the sun’s heat.

Air-to-air heat pumps will keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer.

Rainwater from the roof will be collected in a 1,700-gallon underground cistern and used, in addition to flushing toilets, for heating and cooling.

The water that doesn’t go into the cistern will be directed to a rain garden, where it will be contained until it seeps down into the garden.

It is somewhat surprising that a botanical garden would construct a new building just four years after the garden’s official opening. The general thinking is that people will donate money to create gardens, but are less likely to do so for buildings.

“The need was so apparent,” Heffernan said. “And there was the opportunity to build Maine’s greenest building, and the Bosarge family was so attached to the gardens and the idea of building a green building.”

She said the building is a perfect marriage between the gardens’ missions of horticultural and environmental education and creating a sustainable building.

Part of the reason the education center is needed is that the gardens have been more successful than anyone expected.

The number of visitors grew from 40,000 in 2007 to about 90,000 in 2010, and 100,000 visitors are projected for 2011, O’Connor said.

The building cost $4.2 million, and the Bosarge Family Foundation donated $2 million, with a challenge grant to raise at least $1.5 million from other sources. That challenge was exceeded.

Ed and Marie Bosarge are from Houston but have a home in Southport.

The two-story west wing of the building has office space for the staff and rooms for meetings.

Included is an office for a visiting expert, whether horticulturist or artist, and that program will begin this summer. The main part of the building has one large room that can be divided into three smaller spaces.

The building floors are a mix of concrete, to retain heat overnight, and maple. The interior walls and pillars are made of wood.

The design is a collaboration between Scott Simons Architects of Portland and Maclay Architects of Waitsfield, Vt., with Fore Solutions in Portland as the green-building consultant.

This building is in the middle of a botanical garden, so there are, of course, plants involved.

The plants are all native to Maine, and designed to survive in the particular site. No irrigation will be required, O’Connor said.

Heffernan said the plants also help support wildlife. Already she is seeing birds coming to enjoy the serviceberries, or amelanchier, growing in the gardens.

Admission to the building will be free on Friday. After the 11 a.m. opening ceremonies, free tours will be offered and a slide show on native plants will be presented. Opening events will continue Saturday, with free tours and children’s environmental activities all day.

Divas World Productions will present a concert from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday. The concert is free, but reservations are required.

Music will be a large part of the programs at the education center. One of the reasons the ceilings are so tall is for acoustics.

Tom Atwell can be contacted at 791-6362 or at:

tatwell@pressherald.com

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