The community greenhouse in Haines Junction is used for much more than just growing plants, says Steve Osborne.

The solarium is a place where members of the small community on the edge of Kluane National Park can grow food they would otherwise have to make the trek to Whitehorse to buy.

It's a nursery for the flowers that decorate the village's porches and yards throughout the summer. It's a resource many of the area's senior citizens have come to rely on.

But most importantly, said Osborne, who is co-chair of the Haines Junction Employment Development Society (HJEDS), it is a place where people learn invaluable job skills.

"For five years now, the greenhouse has offered employment to people with chronic employment problems," Osborne explained Wednesday.

"When we started in 2003, we sat down with our focus group - people who are chronically unemployed - and they said a greenhouse would be neat because it's something consistent, something that would happen every year rather than these projects that get parachuted in and then are over after a few weeks or months."

And the project has been a success, he said. Every year, it employs a full-time manager and a full-time co-ordinator, along with six or seven trainees, who come out of the program with marketable skills and the confidence to look for work.

But the program suffered a serious setback this week, when the roof of the greenhouse collapsed under the mass of snow and ice which has collected on it over the winter.

"The manager and a trainee were removing snow when it happened," Osborne reported, "so we were very fortunate that no one was inside."

The two men were working to get the weight off from the side of the structure when the aluminum arches and plastic sheeting that make up the building crumpled.

Osborne blames a year of heavy snowfall coupled with a buildup of ice - the result of rain followed by freezing temperatures.

If there was a bad time for this to happen, it is now.

The board of HJEDS is hiring trainees who would start work next month, and the plants which have been germinating in the basement of the Haines Junction Community Hall for the past months need to be planted. As well, money the board has been squirreling away must now go to damage control.

"Ironically, we were planning to build a bigger, better greenhouse this year, but now that money will have to go toward replacing this one," Osborne said.

The one bright point is that none of the mechanics within the greenhouse was significantly damaged. An industrial fan, a heater and a water pump were all at the edges of the building and escaped the avalanche.

Even without the expense of replacing those items, it will probably cost about $4,000 to buy a new structure.

"It's not just a greenhouse that grows zucchinis, it's an employment opportunity and it's a community centre," Osborne said of the project's importance.

There are no plans yet for a fund-raising drive, but the HJEDS will soon be inviting everyone in the community to a work bee to take away the collapsed structure and put up a new one.