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A
Garden For and About Community
Beans, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, broccoli, wheat.
Well into its first summer of cultivation, the , an initiative begun by students last year,
is producing a healthy list of edibles using sustainable
methods.
Selected greens
from the Smith College Community Garden:
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The community garden, a series of plots organized near the
Center for Early Childhood Education (CECE) on Lyman Road,
is a collective effort. Periodic work parties have gathered
an assortment of students, faculty and staff members for
weeding, watering and other gardening.
Eventually, Smith Community
Garden organizers hope to produce an ongoing supply of
vegetables and spices for distribution to campus dining
rooms and for other purposes, said Caroline Henderson ’11, a garden committee member. Already,
the Campus Center Café has used the garden’s
lettuce, basil, peppers and other veggies, she said.
But the Smith Community
Garden is intended to be more than just a vegetable plot,
Henderson said. Started by Erin Kassis ’11,
Katelyn Lucy ’09, Lesley Joplin ’09 and Mollie
Grabriel ’09, the garden develops community and works
as an educational source while employing sustainable techniques
and, ultimately, producing nutritious food for the Smith
community and beyond.
“We wanted to invoke the same message of self-sufficiency,
sustainability, and patriotism that is associated with victory
gardens,” said Henderson, who joined the other students
on the garden committee last fall, referring to gardens planted
during world wars I and II to boost morale and contribute
to the food supply. “We believe the tradition of the
victory garden needs reviving as we face global climate change
and other pressing environmental and social issues.”
The students hope to expand
the community aspect of the garden in the fall, teaching
gardening to young students at the CECE, for example, and
growing wheat as part of the local Hungry Ghost Bakery’s “Little Red Hen” community
wheat-growing project, Henderson said. Garden organizers
also plan to partner with Dano Weisbord, Smith’s new
environmental sustainability director, as well as dining
services, several academic departments, and student groups
such as Engineers for a Sustainable World in further community-based
initiatives.
“The goal is for this garden to be as integrated as
possible into the Smith community and academic life,” she
said.
So far, the Smith Community
Garden is a fast-growing success, reports Henderson. “The garden is certainly growing
at a rapid pace,” she said, with about 130 members
on the garden committee’s contact list, and a regularly
updated . “I see potential for it to
grow and really become a community asset.”
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