MEXICO — Barbara Radmore and others in RSU 10 involved in the Western Foothills Kids Association after-school program have plans to build a greenhouse of 1,500, 2-liter clear plastic soda bottles.

The 6- by 8-foot building would be used by students in Meroby Elementary School’s after-school program, and by teacher Lindsay MacMillan’s students at Mountain Valley Middle School.

Radmore said Meroby after-school site coordinator, Becky Skibitsky, found a site on the Internet showing a recycled bottle greenhouse at a school. Radmore and her husband, Jim, traveled to a Cornerstone, Vt., school that built the greenhouse.

“This is a great project to do with kids. They will learn to recycle, repurpose and reuse,” Radmore said.

And it will serve to begin seedlings for the middle school garden and the garden beds at Meroby school.

Jim Radmore, a technology teacher at the middle school, and his students have already built a wooden frame for the greenhouse. Now, they’re waiting for bottle donations.

Anyone who has 2-liter clear bottles they would like to donate may call Barbara Radmore at 357-6987, or drop them off at the RSU 10 Central Office in Dixfield, Meroby, Mountain Valley Middle or Mountain Valley High schools.

Hopes are to built the greenhouse in Jim Radmore’s technology room and move it to a site near the school’s garden in April.

The bottles are cut in half horizontally, and connected to form walls. The larger bottles are needed because they are stronger.

“As far as I know, we’ll be the only bottle greenhouse in the state,” Radmore said.

As director of the Western Foothills Kids Association, Radmore is searching for grants to purchase seeds, soil, small tools and containers. She has already found grants that ensure a garden bed at many schools in RSU 10, as well as other garden-related items.

In the long term, she hopes some participants in the after-school program will plant seedlings in containers that would be given to senior citizens, families and others without room to grow a garden at their homes.

Children will research the vegetable varieties that grow well in containers as well as instructions on caring for the plants.