The Garden Project: Chapter 2--$$$$

Of course with any sort of project like gardening, there is money involved. Where do we get the money to renovate this garden you ask? Well, being at a college where there is a student government association (SGA), student clubs are funded for their projects. Isn't that convenient?

But the process is a bit complicated to acquire this money. We have to first fill out a form explaining what the money will be used for. The SGA meets as a group to discuss this funding request and then there is an open meeting for all club officers to attend, such as myself. It is here that they ask us to describe the event and what we plan to do with the money. They then decide "yay" or "nay" on the funding request and we always hope for a "yay." Sounds easy right? Nope. We have to fill out this form three weeks before we plan on using the money; we cannot just ask and receive. So it requires a bit of anticipation for the funds.

Good news: As the fiscal year of our school comes to an end, the SGA realizes that there is a lot of money that has not been spent (since they are allocated a large sum at the beginning of each fiscal year which does not rollover to the next year). With knowledge of this large sum of money not used up completely, clubs JUMP at the chance to use this money for their clubs.

SFOC was particularly excited because we needed a lot of money for all of our anticipated garden renovations! We asked for money for new wood, tools, hardware and seedlings just to start and it all got approved! So the renovations were on their way.

The Garden Project: Chapter 1--The Planning

April 15th: I returned from Italy three weeks later wondering what had been done with the garden. A couple SFOC students had gathered to clear out leaves and plant some peas, since those have to go in the ground early on. But once I returned, we were all able to get together and form a plan of action as to what to do with our garden. It is a 1800 sq. foot area with 600 sq. feet of garden space. We inspected the construction of the raised beds with wooden boards. The boards were completely rotted away; so rotted away that all I had to do with kick one and it would fall away from the soil.

We knew we had to replace them. We then decided that maybe what we wanted to do with the garden was not so much focus on planting a ton of vegetables and turning into a vegetable producing machine. We wanted to make the garden look nice first (it is in shambles at this point in time). The ground had small pebbles on it with lots and lots of weeds growing in between the beds and it just looks neglected. Poor garden! We then found out there was a seedling rack where there should have been seedlings being prepared over the winter, but there weren't. We simply did not have enough time to invest in starting from seed (too much risk of improper germination), especially with our busy schedules and lack of people to take care of the seedlings.

We divided up tasks to beautify the garden. I was quite excited about making it look nice again, so I chose to look into stones for the ground and the landscaping aspect of it. Alexis would look into where we could get seedlings donated to us or where we could buy them, and Edward would look into wood to replace the beds (untreated of course). I also decided to learn about composting since we were told by Dick and Jane that there were composting bins...this becomes a chapter in itself.

The Garden Project: Introduction

I am not really sure how to begin this story, so I will just start from the beginning, as do all novels.

There is a garden on campus that was created for The Garden Society, a club on campus where students had the chance to learn about gardening. It has been around for a couple of years, but since my time here, I have not heard much about it. It was just this club that no one really knew about and no one really knew when they got together to garden. Skip ahead to a couple months ago when I am in my weekly meeting with Slow Food on Campus (check out www.slowfoodusa.org) to understand exactly what this club is about. We are talking about projects and events come Spring since the weather is shaping up and the snow is just about gone. One of us mentions that we should team up with Garden Society to show our true values and bring knowledge to the student body. Good news and Bad news....first the bad: the couple who ran Garden Society in the past were overwhelmed with the amount of work it took to run the garden with just the two of them, so they had no plans of continuing it this season. Good news: those two people were in my history class, so I decided to jump at the opportunity to acquire the garden.

Here is the conversation:

Me: "Hey, Dick and Jane** (Names have been changed)

D/J: "Hey Audrey, how's it going?"

Me: "Good, I was wondering what you were planning on doing with the garden this year?"

D/J: "Oh, well, we are actually looking for someone to take it over; its just too much work for us!

Me: "I'll take it!"

D/J: "Seriously?? OK! Great!" (with smiles on their faces and sighs of relief)

Me: "Yea, totally. Slow Food has a bunch of people who are interested in gardening!"

So there you have it--the acquisition of the garden.

This was late March. The problem with the timing is that myself, Dick, and Jane were leaving on our wine trips in 3 days and would be gone for 3 weeks...meaning there would be no one around to help with the transition of the garden and prepping of the beds while we were away. Before leaving, the three of us met where I was given the Garden Society binder with information about past lay outs of the garden, seed information, when to plant, what to plant, where to plant, how to plant, and all the other paper work. They gave me a quick run down of what they had done for us (NOTHING!!). So basically, we acquired a garden that had not been maintained throughout the winter and had no seedlings started to be put into the ground. Myself and the members of Slow Food (SFOC) knew this would be a project for us. (Especially difficult for myself since I know very little about gardening).