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Chance the gardener SPRING IS A BUSY TIME in any garden, as land is cleared, tilled and prepped for seedlings that hold the promise of a plentiful fall harvest. For the students behind the College’s Sprout Garden, spring was spent designing and building a chicken coop to welcome six laying hens. The addition of chickens is just the latest in a series of expansions that the student-run garden has seen since it was established nearly 10 years ago by Alaya Morning ’06 on a modest 600-square-foot plot near the 360 Apartments. Kira Kirk ’18 (above) started helping in the garden as a first-year student, but got more serious when she took on the new Outreach Fellow position her sophomore year. The role saw her less in the flowerbeds, and more promoting Sprout while helping shape its future. “Every single day last semester I probably talked about Sprout,” Kirk said. “I would [always] bring it up in passing.” Sprout now covers close to 10,000 square feet. Located behind Cro, it includes about 40 in-ground beds, a hoop house for seed starts and year-round crops, and the new chicken coop. The garden is run in partnership with the College’s
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Office of Sustainability, which provides guidance, direction and coordination for the various sustainability efforts across campus. The expansion and enhancement plan for Sprout that Kirk and her team have put forward will secure more stable funding, and cement future projects, ranging from expanding the garden beds, to enhancing projects like a weekly farmers market at the College. Richard Madonna, vice president for finance and administration, is serving as an adviser to students involved with the garden. This includes recent student proposals to secure funding that would expand and increase programming. “I’d love to see more local agriculture on campus so that students can buy local produce and meet others in the community,” he said. Part of the outreach includes tapping into students’ individual passions for contributing. “Right now we have a fellow who wants to be a chef,” Kirk explained. “He wants to grow basil and tomatoes so he can cook pizza with what we grow in the garden. So students can use their individual passions to make the garden a better place.”
SUMMER 2016
6/13/16 10:03 AM