Mobile Lab to Help More than 100 Miami-Dade Schools Grow 1 Million Orchids

An effort to restore rare orchids to South Florida's suburban landscapes is expanding with a mobile lab.

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden partnered with over 100 Miami-Dade County schools to grow a million orchids and transplant them into trees. The program hopes to restore native plants nearly wiped out by suburban sprawl and over-zealous collectors.

On Friday, Fairchild will unveil STEMLab, a mobile lab that will travel from school to school to help students cultivate their own orchids. The lab was built in a decommissioned school bus by University of Miami students.

Through the project, hundreds of thousands of seedlings are growing in labs at Fairchild and some schools. The mobile lab helps expand the program to more schools that don't currently have the space or resources for their own labs.