UW Garden back for business

Interested gardeners!

Come out to a garden party and find out more and do some seed planting. Pizza provided.

Thursday at 7:30 in room 2105 of the SLC - March 8.

Contact Candace if interested: clstryke@fes.uwaterloo.ca

UW Community Garden Profile

The University of Waterloo Community Garden is made up of individual staff, students, and faculty who are striving to construct a common long-term gardening location on campus. The goal is to promote and practice local organic food production, offer an example of sustainable living on campus, and to educate participants about gardening and vegetable production.

The garden promotes sustainable agricultural practices as well as sustainable lifestyle choices. Urban, organic farming enables people to practice a more conscientious form of consumption: it makes unproductive land productive, diverts waste (via composting), reduces the costs of food production (both visible and hidden, environmental and economic) and improves local biodiversity (through increased organic material in the soil, propagation of a more diverse range of cultivars, attraction of bird, insect and animal life). The garden also provides a source of fresh healthy food for students on campus that may otherwise not have access.

The garden is located on university land just north of Columbia Lake on Westmount. The garden is to be run by community members associated with the University of Waterloo, each member taking on a small part of the work and responsibilities. The garden space and work is done communally. The idea is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge between gardeners, of which encouraging new gardeners by providing them a support system. Two days a week are designated as gardening nights and members are encouraged to come out as often as they can. The produce is divided between the gardeners as it comes into season and excess is given to Food Not Bombs.

Several donations of seed and tools were made last year which was the first year of production. This year we were fortunately enough to secure $1000 from the Waterloo Environmental Studies Endowment Fund to purchase inputs for the garden for the 2007 season as well as to have canning parties, and garden/farm tours. The garden's focus is on sustainability and part of that is in promoting local food and food preservation.

One challenge of having the garden on campus is the fact that many students are gone during the summer. As a result, of approximately the 40 people that expressed interest in the garden only about seven gardeners committed to the garden during the growing season; many of these gardeners having never gardened before. The garden is always looking for new participants; if you are interested please contact clstryke@fes.uwaterloo.ca for more information.

There are high hopes for the 2007 season with more gardeners having been recruited and a greater awareness of the garden beginning to occur.