Students Plant Community Garden on Campus

If you’ve walked by Amsterdam Hall lately, you’ve probably noticed the budding garden across the street. On Saturday mornings, students from the GW Food & Justice Alliance come to cultivate the GroW community garden and help spread awareness and education about urban gardening.

Everything from rhubarb colored chard, radishes, beets, and peas are growing right in GW’s own backyard. Garden manager Melissa Eddison said the garden began to surface Sept. 2009 with about four garden beds and has received a great amount of support from the Foggy Bottom community. Spreading mulch, filling beds and even painting a mural behind the garden is all included in the Saturday festivities. But growing a garden in an urban setting poses its challenges. To fight too much direct sunlight and to make sure the garden receives enough, Eddison said the garden is south facing for direct sunlight and trees are being planted to create partial shade for crops. The garden was designed by the students to grow more crops in a smaller space through a process called grid gardening and also houses a compost bin.

Food & Justice Alliance President Amanda Formica was inspired by friends and the Real Food Challenge, a national campaign to start farms and gardens on college campuses, to take action on growing the garden at GW. There are plans to have a similar garden on the Mount Vernon campus. In addition, there are hopes for a rooftop garden on top of Warwick Hall, a School of Public Health building located in Washington Circle.

All of their hard work hasn’t only helped “green” GW, students working in the GroW community garden contributed over 200 hours to Mrs. Obama’s service challenge.

The garden is sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, and receives support from sororities, fraternities, professors and graduate students. It is also a community partner for The Neighbors Project which works with DC based organizations to help organize events and promote the awareness of social issues across several different areas.

The Food & Justice Alliance will be working in the garden every Saturday until Nov. including the summer months. For more information or to help with the garden and contribute to a sustainable GW, contact foodjusticealliance@gmail.com.