Greenhouse Manager and Environmental Health & Safety Specialist
Location: Edwin Moore Greenhouse
The Ohio Wesleyan campus is filled with grand academic halls, historic sports facilities, and modern residence halls, but for all their architectural glory, perhaps none of them can surpass the beauty of the Edwin Moore Greenhouse in full bloom.
For 24 years, Barb Wiehe has been the caretaker of the greenhouse and the 350 species of plants growing there, including such exotics as the amorphophallus titanium from the rainforests of Sumatra. It’s better known as the carrion flower or corpse flower because its flower, which blooms infrequently and for a short time, emits a powerful scent that resembles rotting flesh.
Originally from Caldwell, in southeast Ohio, Barb enrolled at Ohio State University to pursue a career in healthcare, but instead, she discovered a love of plant biology. “Plants need care and nurturing like people, but they don’t talk back,” she laughs. In addition to managing the greenhouse, she coordinates labs that use plant and greenhouse material, and she helps faculty and students with research projects, including drought studies, root-zone impact studies, and the creation of a pollinator garden at OWU.
(Photo by Paul Vernon)