A garden grows

The PLU community garden celebrates growth, participation

Bryanna Plog - plogb@plu.edu

mast news reporter

With spring comes a season of flowers, planting and the perfect mixture of rain showers and sun. This also creates the right combination for another successful growing season at PLU’s community garden, which is soon to host a celebration and rededication ceremony April 20.

For the past two years, the campus garden has served as a connection between the PLU community and the Parkland community, as a provider of food to low-income families in the area and as a way for students to get their hands dirty planting, weeding and harvesting.
Recent alumna Rachel Esbjornson has worked on the garden for the past two years.

“Our goal is number one to get this space producing food, plants growing, operating as a garden,” she said. “It’s kind of this hub where lots and lots of stuff can come together.”

The garden is certainly coming together. April 13 was the first planting day and already thin sprigs of onions and small lettuce leaves poke out of the rich soil.

April 13, about 15 students, recent alumni and a member of the Parkland community overturned soil, separated out rocks, weeded and watered the 10,000 sq. ft. plot. The garden is a community space where volunteers help with the communal land.

President Loren Anderson will rededicate the garden April 20 at a public celebration starting 12 p.m. Music, entertainment and a blessing will take place before volunteers can help with the planting of the new season.

Though there was a garden on campus in the late 1990s, it wasn’t until April 2006 that the current garden project really got started.

Co-founders Kate Fontana and Becky Mares wanted to find a better way to connect the university with the greater community, help people learn where their food came from, and build on PLU’s sustainability goals.

Neither had much gardening experience before, but built on their goals stemming from separate trips to the impoverished areas of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and to Costa Rica studying sustainability.

The original garden plot was only 15 ft by 10 ft and located by the baseball field. Now, in their more permanent space across from Ingram, the garden is more than 70 times bigger.

“It’s so exciting,” Mares said. “It’s becoming an established entity.”

In the garden’s first year, the garden was able to donate 400 pounds of food. The next year, their land size grew and they were able to donate 800 pounds. This year, that number could double or triple at least with the 24 rows of broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables planned.
Most of the food has been donated to nearby Trinity Lutheran Church’s food program for low-income area residence. This is also the plan for this year, though with an excess, volunteers will also get some fresh produce.

Donations have played a big role in the success of the garden. The garden is organic and instead of using pesticides or fertilizers, students and community members have donated food scraps and manure. The club also gets coffee grounds from two local Starbucks and Northern Pacific Coffee Company to enrich the soil. The plants and tools are also given or loaned to the club.
As with most gardens, the garden club members and volunteers also plan on planting flowers to attract bees, birds and hopefully students as well. As well as providing a way to relieve stress and help the community, garden club members also see the garden as a place where students can come and relax on benches to study or simply enjoy the garden.

“It’s a place that people can come to chill out,” Esbjornson said.

The garden runs off volunteer help and different clubs on campus have organized work days. Classes have also come as part of service learning or to integrate the garden into their curriculum. While environmental science, religion and first-year writing classes have come to volunteer, a geosciences class last year also came for hands-on learning testing the soil.

First-year Liz Lonsdale was one of the members of the club shoveling soil at the Sunday work party.

“It was just an empty field,” she said. “It’s good to see it as a green space.”

Besides donating the previously unused land, the university has also put up a fence and provided a watering system.

For the future, the garden club hopes to get a paid staff position to help maintain the garden and spruce up the fence with a mural to attract more attention and celebrate the ideas of the community garden.

The garden is located on 121st Street by the Women’s Center. Anyone who wants to help garden should come to the weekly work parties from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays at the garden. In 15 minutes volunteers can help grow food for the poor, learn about the earth and take frustrations from the last exam out on that patch of weeds. A winning combination for a new growing season.

Photo by Jenna Callaway

Alumna Rachael Esbjornson works in the community garden Sunday, April 13 from 12-3 p.m. The harvest from the community garden goes to local low-income families. Last year, the garden donated 800 pounds of food, mainly to nearby Trinity Lutheran Church’s food program. Volunteers are welcome to help garden from 12-3 p.m. every Sunday, excepting April 20, which will start at 1 p.m.