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By Angela Voht
Clarke (left) and Martin in the Campus Community Garden
The Campus Community Garden (CCG) has become a many-splendoured scene. Located on the north side of MacKenzie Avenue, beside the Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF building), it offers campus gardeners the opportunity to grow fresh organic produce and native plants, to exercise and breathe lush garden air, and to learn and socialize over all things earth-bound.
The Environmental Studies Students Association established the garden in 1997, and in 2000 family housing students took over, building 22 allotment plots and offering space for members of the university community to grow their own fruits and vegetables. Come 2006, the CCG members formed a governance structure that today includes staff, alumni and students.
The garden has been increased to 45 plots, with two larger community plots, a children’s play area, composting and tool shed. Any member of the university community is welcome, seasoned or completely inexperienced, who wishes to spend some time sowing and reaping.
Recently granted club membership by the UVSS, the garden club attracts people from all walks of campus life, from faculty and staff to undergrads and grad students. While the average age of members tends to over 30, younger students are being drawn to the garden and all it has to offer.
Wanda Martin, a registered nurse and UVic sessional instructor in nursing, is the garden’s volunteer site coordinator. “The garden has a lot to offer the university community in terms of sustainability, health promotion and community action,” she explains.
UVic nursing student Samantha Clarke, in a practicum for her third-year Health Promotion and Community Empowerment class, contributed 78 hours to the garden last semester, where she saw the socioenvironmental model of health applied to the real world. Students in the class were placed throughout the city to learn about small communities and facilitate health empowerment along the way. Clarke and her practicum colleague Melissa Umphrey took part in CCG club meetings and garden work parties, helped with funding initiatives and conducted surveys of members to find the inspiration behind joining.
Most of the members are there, not surprisingly, to grow produce that is fresher (and cheaper) than what is found in store coolers. Others mentioned the benefits of spending time outside with children, family members and friends, taking part in a positive community action network, and getting beyond the limitations that apartments and residence dwelling can impose on student life.
Members have fun, feel productive and accomplished, and get to know people in the university community they likely would not have met otherwise.
While Clarke’s health promotion class is finished, she continues to take part in the garden via rental of her own plot. For $30, any member of the university community can rent a plot for the 2007 growing season. The fee goes right back into garden costs like tools and soil amendments. Currently, there is only one plot available for rent, but the community plot is available for volunteer use.
And there are bigger plans for the CCG. “We’re hoping to get a biology co-op student for fall,” says Martin. “Funding isn’t absolutely ensured yet, but we’ve got the student interest, so hopefully all will go well.”
In the long term, the location of the CCG is uncertain, due to its status as a designated building site in UVic’s 2003 Campus Plan. Though the garden does have secure tenure in its present location until 2011, facilities management is unable to predict how the garden location may be used beyond that.
“Through the university’s sustainability initiatives, we definitely encourage the garden, but we can’t pre-determine future campus plans,” says Dick Chappell, director of maintenance and operations.
But for now, whether a resource for students to attain their educational goals, or a place to dig one’s fingers into the soil and grow some food, the garden is an excellent way to pass some time and make new connections in the university community.
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