Photo by: Adam Hammerman

The DU Garden Club and Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Sustainability Committee will grow plants hydroponically on the Driscoll Bridge beginning in May to advertise a new trend of growing plants that takes less land.

There will be 24 plants hanging in pots on one of the east windows of Driscoll Bridge. Five or six different kinds of plants will include mainly herbs such as basil, cilantro, dill and sage, as well as beans, peppers, peas, lettuce, kale and a few types of flowers. DU Garden Club members will be able to pick the plants as they please and will use the vegetables for their own salads and salsa, according to sophomore Daniel Powell, DU Garden Club president

Plants grown hydroponically do not use soil and they use a special nutrient solution.

The solution has calcium, magnesium, sulfur, nitrate and a few other minerals.

According to Powell, plants grown hydroponically are usually grown inside, particularly in greenhouses because they are more controlled and can be grown all year long.

“Growing plants hydroponically are supposed to grow 30 percent faster, grow more produce and use at least 30 percent less water,” said Powell.  

Powell founded the DU Garden Club Club last spring. The club has 39 members and they currently tend to the community Bridge Garden across from Centennial Halls and the campus Permaculture Garden, located outside the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

Powell said he took interest in gardening and sustainability after coming to DU, and he started growing a garden in his room in JMAC last year. Powell grew sunflowers, beans, peas and cucumbers.

Recently, he has been doing research in a green house growing tomatoes hydroponically, The research sparked the idea to grow plants hydroponically on campus.

“With a growing population and shrinking size of arable land, specifically due to things like over-fertilizing and mono crop fields of corn, people will need to come up with new solutions to feed themselves, and hydroponics is one way to do this,” said Powell. “[Hydroponic plants] can be grown quicker and with less resources than most conventional approaches.”

Powell said they are growing the hydroponic garden as advertisement for the DU Garden Club, DUET and the USG Sustainability Committee.

“We’re also doing it as education for a growing method of the future,” said Powell.

Powell said the project has been in the works since last spring as a collaborative project between DU Garden Club and the USG Sustainability Committee.

Two other students, sophomores Sara Neuder and Raelina Krikston, are also working on design and overall aesthetics as part of the project.

“Originally we wanted it to be completed by April in time for Earth Month, but we had to wait for approval and a budget from USG Sustainability Committee,” said Powell.

This project received a $350 budget from the USG Sustainability Committee two weeks ago.

“Sara and I are both on that committee, so we floated the proposal and it got approved a few weeks ago,” said Powell. “We have a chunk of the student funds money that goes to projects we or any students have that are sustainability related.”

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