Since they are currently enjoying sunny days and just-turning leaves, new students at MHC probably aren't thinking about how to escape freezing temperatures and blankets of snow. Those who took advantage of the College's thirtieth annual "great plant giveaway” last week may never suffer from winter blues. Not only will their dorm rooms host a small reminder of greener times and the scents and colors of warmer months, but they now know their way to Talcott Greenhouse, a warm, vibrant oasis since 1899.

Giving plants to students has been a Mount Holyoke tradition for at least fifty years, and in 1971, College horticulturist John Walker formalized the practice. Years before folks were talking about "green" practices in relation to building design and campus master planning, Walker was turning the campus green by distributing 6,000 plants to students each fall and maintaining a Talcott "emergency room" for overwatered and bug-infested patients.

Ellen Shukis, director of the botanic garden, happily continues the plant giveaway tradition as a tool to foster awareness of the greenhouse and horticulture across campus. During this year's orientation, at least 900 students found their way to Talcott, each eager to select a free plant from the samples of Swedish ivy, jade plant, spider plant, aloe, and other dorm-hearty varieties. (The number suggests that some returning students may have taken a plant or two. Shukis reminds the community that the giveaway is for new students only.) In June, July, and August, summer worker Lahari Yanthrawaduge '04 and the Talcott staff, under the direction of greenhouse manager Russ Billings, propagated and cared for close to one thousand plants for the giveaway.

"It's a very personal experience," said Shukis, who has witnessed the giveaway for eleven years. "Students examine the plants carefully from all sides. Many seem to be listening for which one is calling to them." Answering that call last year was Hannah Chotiner-Gardner '04, who quickly became attached to her plant because she missed her black Labrador at home and was "looking for something that I could care for and take care of." Muchacho, as the Spanish ivy came to be known, grew happily on Chotiner-Gardner's windowsill, so much so that she had to return to the greenhouse to get him a bigger pot. She took Muchacho home over the summer, and he continued to flourish. "I had to get him an enormous pot and now I can barely carry him," Chotiner-Gardner reports. "I learned that to be happy, all a plant needs is sun, water, and loving care." When she brought Muchacho to MHC this year, she had no space in her room for him. He now resides on the windowsill in one of the stairwells of Wilder. Says Chotiner-Gardner, "I plan to have Muchacho sticking around for a long time. And just to clear something up now, it will be me at reunion with the flatbed truck for my wondrous first-year plant!"

Shukis hopes that students who visited Talcott's Head House during the giveaway will be curious about the rest of the 6,000-square-foot space and will return often for plant advice, repotting help, or reading breaks under the palm trees. While the facility is always home to a collection of orchids, ferns, tropicals, subtropicals, all sizes of prickly cacti and succulents, sweet-smelling blooms, and much-loved goldfish, new seasons and new research projects make Talcott worth revisiting.

Right now, test-tube-like pitcher plants and clasping venus flytraps can be viewed through the windows of the Ecology House. In the cold frames outside, pots of Chinese plants await transfer to gardens adjacent to the greenhouse. These plants, never before seen at MHC, were grown by gardens supervisor Thomas Clark, who collected seeds last fall from more than 100 plants near Tibet in a mountainous area of the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. Clark will watch these plants closely, evaluating their hardiness and adaptability, as well as their ornamental value.

New students who missed the 2001 plant giveaway during orientation may still claim a plant by visiting Talcott during its regular hours of operation: Monday–Friday, 9 am–4 pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1–4 pm.