Two OU student organizations are working together to create a community garden on the main campus by next spring.
OUr Earth and the Green Week committee of OU Student Congress want to build a garden for students and the Norman community to grow food and plants. Anyone would be welcome to eat the food, and the groups might donate leftovers to local shelters, said Chris Applegate, OUr Earth president and geography senior.
“It would be a place for people to come together, work together,” Applegate said. “They would have different backgrounds but this would be something in common to bring them together.”
OUr Earth is a group devoted to teaching OU and the community about local and global environmental issues, according to its Web site. The garden would be a hands-on way to achieve this goal.
“People would learn about the 21st-century sustainable movement,” Applegate said. “It would bring about awareness and maybe even bring in people who have never thought about gardening before. People might develop a new hobby or even find a future passion they can pursue.”
Currently, OU has two community gardens, but they are located on the southern part of campus where they are not easily accessible, Applegate said. One garden is at Kraettli Apartments, an OU complex for single and family living. The other is south of Lloyd Noble Center on Imhoff Road.
“The one at Kraettli is more of a Kraettli resource than an OU one,” said Mary Hestilow, Green Week secretary and economics senior. “I have talked to a few people who live there, and I am under the impression a few people enjoy using it. I am not sure if everyone is aware of it though.”
Applegate said the groups want the garden to be on the main campus or near the dorms where more students would be able to use it.
The garden is still in the planning phases, but the goal is to plant the first crop in the spring of 2011, depending on approval by OU President David Boren and other logistics.
“President Boren has always opened up and let students have what they have requested,” Applegate said. “We got recycling here in the 1990s because of OUr Earth standing up. President Boren got recycling started up on this campus. He’s really receptive and we look forward to working with him.”
Before seeking Boren’s approval, Hestilow and Applegate will meet with related departments, including landscaping, the College of Architecture and botany groups, and ask for input and feedback, Applegate said. Hestilow also is in contact with Texas A&M University’s community garden president, Mike Burbidge.
Burbidge’s consultation allowed Hestilow to consider potential problems and learn how Texas A&M handled them, she said. Burbidge was able to explain what the university does with the garden during the summer, how the group generated interest and commitment and how to manage the garden and its plots.
At Texas A&M, different student organizations can pay for a plot of the garden, Burbidge said in a phone interview. The garden started small with only about a dozen people but now has about 35 regular gardeners and no empty plots.
“We have people of all types of backgrounds,” said Burbidge, spatial sciences senior. “It’s not just agricultural people or horticulture people but also engineers and pre-vets. We also have professors, a high school teacher from Bryan-College Station and people from the community.”
The initial cost of the garden would depend on location, infrastructure and materials. Green Week plans to donate $2,000 to the project, Applegate said. The organizations contributing to the garden also will participate in the Pepsi Refresh challenge to win a grant.
The competition is a monthly contest where people and businesses can post ideas online on how to change their communities, according to the Web site. Visitors then vote, and the winner receives a grant, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.
“The contest is about ideas that can change the world or community,” Applegate said. “We see [the garden] fitting right in with the Pepsi Refresh project. This would provide a new vision to the university and add another sustainable feature to our campus. I mean, this could be here for 100 years if we build it and expand it.”
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mfrancis1 2 years, 2 months ago
And to think I used to be worried about the next generation's commitment to community and the public good! Kudos to OUr Earth & Chris Applegate, Mary Hestilow & Green Week, as well as those Texas A&M folks! And you might want to check out the Community Garden at Food and Shelter For Friends. You make us proud!