UConn Botanical Conservatory (EEB Greenhouses)

The EEB Greenhouses, named for the University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, were built in the late 1950s to support the university's research and teaching mission, according to the Botanical Conservatory's own About page. An Atlas Obscura listing says the greenhouse opened in 1960, while the student newspaper the Daily Campus says it was built in the 1960s.

The complex has gone by several names: "EEB Plant Growth Facilities" in a 2009 blog post, "Biodiversity Education and Research Greenhouses" in the student press in 2016, and now the UConn Botanical Conservatory, one of four collections in the department's Biodiversity Research Collections. In 2004 a second, 5,000 sq ft facility devoted to research was built on the roof of the Biology/Physics Building.

Corpse flower blooms mark the recent history of the place. The 2004 bloom, billed as the first in New England, drew more than 10,000 visitors according to UConn Today and more than 20,000 according to the Daily Campus; another followed in 2013. In April 2026 "Bullseye", which arrived in 2012 as a seedling from Ohio State University, flowered in the tropical greenhouse, and the queue ran past two hours.

Described by the student press in 2016 as somewhat worn, when a new building was in the design stage, the greenhouses are called an aging facility by their own staff in 2026. The Tropical Greenhouse (GH 1) is closed to the public for roof repairs, expected to last until October–November 2026 according to the Conservatory's Facebook page.

The EEB complex covers about 11,000 sq ft (nearly 1,020 m²) and is part of the Torrey Life Sciences Building on the north side of the Storrs campus. Three numbered greenhouses, GH 1 (the Tropical Greenhouse), GH 2 and GH 3, are joined by a small connecting building that serves as a corridor; an epiphyte room completes the circuit. On OpenStreetMap they appear as three aligned volumes with gabled roofs, five to six metres high, whose combined footprint is consistent with the area the university quotes.

The roof is glazed: a UConn Photo caption on the official About page refers to the "glass roof" of the EEB Greenhouse, and the site presents the collection as living "under glass".

In April 2026, during an early heat wave, staff had to open the greenhouse vents and place a screen over the corpse flower to filter the sun. They also explain that neighbouring buildings block much of the light in winter and that the age of the facility makes growing harder. The second 5,000 sq ft facility, built in 2004 on the roof of the Biology/Physics Building, is reserved for research and is not covered by this entry.

The Conservatory describes itself as the largest and most diverse collection of living plants at an academic institution in the northeastern United States: nearly 5,000 plants representing more than 2,700 species. The rooms are organised by habitat: tropical plants of the New World, Africa and Asia, desert, and temperate and Mediterranean-type climates. The epiphyte room holds an artificial tree of wire and cork bark covered in mosses, ferns, anthuriums, orchids, Tillandsia air plants and tropical pitcher plants, with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) hanging from its branches.

Older write-ups also mention a large orchid collection, a staghorn fern room, an ant-plant room and a carnivorous-plant room; the student press in 2016 named cacao, vanilla, giant cacti and Venus flytrap. The Rwandan water lily (Nymphaea thermarum), extinct in the wild, was in flower in March 2024, and eight species in the collection are extinct in the wild. A giveaway of propagated plants (more than 500 in December 2025) has become an end-of-semester tradition.

The greenhouses stand behind the Torrey Life Sciences Building, in the Tech Quad on the north side of the Storrs campus; visitors enter through the building's main entrance or the doors facing the garden. The Conservatory receives walk-in visitors Monday to Saturday and groups by appointment, with guided tours of about an hour. The university stresses how pleasant the place is in winter, with benches for sitting among plants from another continent. The rare corpse flower blooms bring special openings, announced as late as 2 a.m. in April 2026.

While the Tropical Greenhouse (GH 1) is closed, the visit is limited to GH 2, GH 3 and the epiphyte room. Nearby, the university's NatureRx programme recommends the campus arboretum and the garden behind the William Benton Museum of Art.