Last week, DU’s Center for Sustainability partnered with USG’s Sustainability Committee to hold Garden Week, with a panel on Tuesday about Urban Agriculture, a showing of the movie “Growing Cities” on Wednesday and culminating with the Garden Party on Thursday.
The Garden Party featured a performance from DU’s own a capella group Exit 205 and speakers from Denver Water and Denver-based Urban Agriculture farm and marketplace the GrowHaus. The event was concluded with a yoga session that provided a relaxing end to Garden Week.
According to junior August Comstock, an environmental science and geography major from Seattle who works as the Food Research Assistant for the Center for Sustainability, Garden Week was created in order to create awareness for a project being initiated as a result of of the Bridge Garden by Centennial Halls and Centennial Towers being sold to a private developer.
Comstock said that DU, in turn, promised to provide the students with a few spots around campus for gardening, including a plot behind Boettcher West that will become a vegetable garden and orchard. Comstock said that there are two other probable garden locations in the works in unannounced locations.
Even more reason for the Center for Sustainability and USG to launch Garden Week is the planned removal of the permaculture garden that currently exists outside of Korbel. Junior Chelsea Warren, an Environmental Science major from Bailey, Colo., the Student Manager of Gardens and the Farmer’s Market through the Center for Sustainability and part of the USG Sustainability Committee, shed some light on the situation. She claimed that parts of the permaculture garden will be moved to West High School through efforts by DU students. The Center for Sustainability hopes to build a partnership including student volunteers at West.
The Center for Sustainability and USG put in huge efforts advertising for the events, tabling all week and creating “seed flyers” that can be planted and sprout plants.
According to USG Senator Mark McCarthy, a freshman finance and Spanish major from Golden, Colo., and Warren, the turnout at every event was much more than expected. The panel on Tuesday night brought in around 30 students, while the movie attracted 35 and the Garden Party had over 65 attendants.
“That’s reassuring for all of us on the project,” said Warren.
Comstock commented about the panel on Tuesday, saying “People really seemed like they were committed to a garden project on campus.”
The Center for Sustainability and USG hoped to raise awareness and attract students to become involved in their efforts for these projects. These undertakings will require a lot of what Warren calls getting your hands in the dirt. The organizations want to involve students from every program across campus and especially hope to attract underclassmen to be involved in the project in the long term. Warren and Comstock emphasized the long-term span of this project and the necessity of recruiting young students who will be dedicated to it over the course of their college years.
According to Comstock, the more students on board with the gardening projects, the more support they will receive from the faculty, which will move the plans farther along.
“We’re trying to get the students as involved and excited and educated as we are,” said Comstock.
Currently the Center for Sustainability is hoping to recruit students for volunteer work in moving the permaculture garden and beginning planning on the new vegetable garden and hopefully adding work study jobs or internships over the summer to help tend the garden.
In correlation to raising awareness about the new garden projects, the Center for Sustainability and USG have been working in partnership with Denver Water and the GrowHaus to raise awareness among students about water conservation and urban agriculture.
Urban agriculture is very present in Denver, with at least 10 urban farms, according to Comstock, and its intention is to put the least amount of distance from farm to table as possible. Not only does this empower people to know where exactly their food is coming from, it reduces the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere in the process of food transportation, according to Comstock.
The Center for Sustainability is also trying to raise awareness for water conservation. The program has already undertaken several major projects around the university, the most recent major one being Project Xeri which happened last year. This project was covered by the Clarion and can be found on the website at duclarion.com.
The Denver Water website claims that 50 percent of Denver homeowners’ water use goes into their lawns. “Xeriscape, or water-wise landscaping, uses low-water-use plants to create a landscape that’s sustainable in Colorado’s semi-arid climate,” according to the Denver Water website.
According to Warren, the DU grounds management let Center for Sustainability xeriscape one university-owned lawn on High Street. To see a time-lapse video of the project, visit Project Xeri’s Facebook page.
The Center for Sustainability has already been involved in successful projects around the DU community for promoting environmental consciousness, and their new garden projects are just as ambitious. Warren said that next steps mostly include moving the permaculture garden to West High School and continuing to expand the network of students involved in the project.
“Garden Week is to gain awareness and let people know this is going to be a project that’s going to be going on over the next few years at DU and to get people excited about sustainability,” said Warren.“You’re entering the world with more limited resources so it’s a fact of the matter, you’re going to have to be smarter about it, so it’s better to start thinking about it now than down the line,”
To get involved with the garden project, come to Center for Sustainability meetings, visit their website or email Warren at chelsea.warren@du.edu.
