Planning Your Garden Workshop
As some of you may know, I have been working on a garden at Stony Brook University for the past year. Last year, I had to take care of a lot of the work alone, according to my own motivation. As shown by the pictures I have posted in the past week, we were able to get some pretty substantial results from the garden.
In name and in financial resources the garden is under the auspices of the Environmental Club here on campus. Michelle Pizer, the president of the club last year, was very supportive of my efforts and always gave me time to talk in club meetings. As well, she gave me over two hundred dollars in funding for gardening materials. I also had some support from the administration. The Director Environmental Stewardship on campus, Amy Provenzano, helped to save the garden when it was rumored that the plot of land it occupied was to be paved over for more parking space.
Also, Heidi Hutner, a member of the English Faculty, gave one of her classes the option to write a paper or work for several hours in the garden. Thanks to that assignment, I had a crew of ten eager ecofeminists when it came time to turn over the soil. Professor Hutner really came through, especially since the garden wasn't getting much physically involved support from the members of the Environmental Club. A few members did get involved an helped to keep me interested and motivated along the way. Sarah Woodhouse really loved working in the greenhouse. She made sure our seedlings always go the water they needed. Geoff Bolen was super-excited about the prospect of gardening and eating food we grew, even if he didn't have much time to help out with all of his hours being spent in a lab. Rezwana Zafar acted as the first administrative officer. She met with me on a regular basis in the beginning to help me think through the process of planning a garden. Then, in the summer, Omkar Aphale, actually worked with me in the garden, weeding, watering and harvesting. He is actually the longest running member of the garden--he was here helping the year before I was around. Unfortunately, when the person who was handling it the year before left, no one was positioned to take the reins and lead the garden. I had to start from scratch.
This time, my goal is to put together enough of an organization that even after I have graduated, the garden is strong enough and organized enough that it will serve the students and the campus community even better than when I was around. To that extent, this past fall, after all of the harvesting was done and there was no actual work to be done in the garden itself, I started advertising the garden around campus, looking for students who wanted to be involved in the planning stages. At that point, Heather Zupin, Christine Peralta, and Sarah Fardoush responded to my notices, and we started meeting regularly to discuss what needed to be done to put together a successful garden the following year. Heather, not committed to one facet of gardening or another, agreed to serve as the Chief Information Officer, the groups administrative coordinator. I told her that this could be considered an internship, something to put on her resume if the workload was enough. She agreed and now she is responsible to make sure everything happens. She is the one who takes over if I die (as Zack puts it). Since it was fall and we had a lot of organic materials to take care of, Christine agreed to become our expert on composting. Of course she had no previous knowledge of composting processes, but she has researched and has started a compost pile in the garden. Sarah was eager to get involved with the garden planning and execution, so I made her the Assistant Garden Coordinator. She is in charge of knowing what goes on in the garden and helping people to get it done.
On that note, just this evening we had our first gardening workshop, and I think it was a real success. Sarah put together a brief presentation and handouts about how to plan a garden. It was concise, well-informed (I liked that she skimmed a lot of blogs to learn personal experiences regarding the gardening principles), and comprehensive. Those in attendance were respectful, attentive and responsive to her remarks. They had numerous questions, which Sarah fielded well, and, overall, I think the event was a success--where we all were all the more excited for and committed to the garden than before.
Returning to the brief overview of the garden up to this point, not long after we started meeting, the members of the group newly formed to help organize the garden began inviting friends to participate. Before long we doubled in size. Sarah brought aboard Fanny Shao to help with a website. Zack Good, an experienced landscaper, was happy to lead up the construction and maintenance of the physical facilities of the garden plot. Ashley Boston volunteered to plan and take responsibility for growing flowers in the garden. It was only the beginning of December and we were in motion to have a full-fledged committee to organize the garden on behalf of the Environmental Club.
At this point, I should admit that when I went shopping last fall for people to get involved on the planning level of the garden I didn't do it in the name of the Environmental Club. I advertised under the name: Stony Brook Gardens. Previous to my involvement in the garden, the plot had been named: Stony Brook Organic Garden. Well, last spring I did not strictly follow organic methods as outlined in any certification policy; so, I didn't feel like we could say we were organic. At the same time, I am all about branding ever since I lived with a brand strategist; I wanted to come up with a name that lead to something bigger than what were currently were. 'Stony Brook Gardens' doesn't just name the geographic location of the garden, it associates with both the university of Stony Brook and the village of Stony Brook. It crosses boundaries. The use of 'gardens' doesn't simply denote the garden we are working with: as a noun, it indicates that we are or at least will be involved with more than just one garden, and as a verb, it expresses action in the present: Stony Brook Gardens! A community gardens. And that is exactly what we want for the garden, to be a place of community action, people working together based on principles of volunteerism, shared leadership (everyone is in charge of something and we all commit to help them with their stewardship), positive reinforcement (if you don't get something done, we aren't going to complain--if you hadn't volunteered to do it in the first place, it wouldn't have gotten done otherwise--we are happy for whatever you are able to make happen), and sustainability (we'd rather re-use, make from what's available or re-invent than use virgin, industrially produced materials).
This year the labeling of organic is not an issue because just this evening someone in attendance at the workshop was very interested in making the garden one hundred percent organic and volunteered to do the research and teach us what we need to do to make the garden organic this semester.
That is Stony Brook Gardens. 'Gardens' is both the present tense of the verb and the plural noun in hopes that one day we will have enough involvement to share our skills and resources to other places in the community. For example, we can work with the garden at the Southampton campus. I would love it if the group could help with a garden at the veterans' home near campus. As well, we could help with caring for gardens at public schools in the area. Stony Brook Gardens could represent much more than the little plot of land along the edge of a huge parking lot with no water source a mile south of campus the university has given us at this point. It could be more. For now, I am happy for all that it has become.
In the current semester, we were able to pick up right were we left off: everyone who was interested in helping organize the garden last semester came back this semester. What's more, the new co-presidents of the Environmental Club, Jimmy and Greg, have reaffirmed the club's interest in and support for the garden and its place in the club's agenda. In fact, they even showed up for the workshop "Planning Your Garden" this evening. The are working with administration to make sure the garden has a secure place on campus for the length of the upcoming growing season and beyond. To bring our efforts to plan the garden in line with our place as a breakout group of the Environmental Club, I now call our gardening group the Garden Organizing Committee (GOC), a committee of the Environmental Club.
As I said before, this evening was a great success. To see the interest and the active involvement by all those in attendance, I felt like something was happening. These students who had confessed no substantial gardening knowledge were learning what it meant to plan in February amidst the cold and the snow for something that would happen in late September, after months of sun and warmth. We are preparing a new generation of farmers, people who plan now for food they will eat in seven months, who are aware and appreciative of the cycles of the earth and how they fit in.
In name and in financial resources the garden is under the auspices of the Environmental Club here on campus. Michelle Pizer, the president of the club last year, was very supportive of my efforts and always gave me time to talk in club meetings. As well, she gave me over two hundred dollars in funding for gardening materials. I also had some support from the administration. The Director Environmental Stewardship on campus, Amy Provenzano, helped to save the garden when it was rumored that the plot of land it occupied was to be paved over for more parking space.
Also, Heidi Hutner, a member of the English Faculty, gave one of her classes the option to write a paper or work for several hours in the garden. Thanks to that assignment, I had a crew of ten eager ecofeminists when it came time to turn over the soil. Professor Hutner really came through, especially since the garden wasn't getting much physically involved support from the members of the Environmental Club. A few members did get involved an helped to keep me interested and motivated along the way. Sarah Woodhouse really loved working in the greenhouse. She made sure our seedlings always go the water they needed. Geoff Bolen was super-excited about the prospect of gardening and eating food we grew, even if he didn't have much time to help out with all of his hours being spent in a lab. Rezwana Zafar acted as the first administrative officer. She met with me on a regular basis in the beginning to help me think through the process of planning a garden. Then, in the summer, Omkar Aphale, actually worked with me in the garden, weeding, watering and harvesting. He is actually the longest running member of the garden--he was here helping the year before I was around. Unfortunately, when the person who was handling it the year before left, no one was positioned to take the reins and lead the garden. I had to start from scratch.
This time, my goal is to put together enough of an organization that even after I have graduated, the garden is strong enough and organized enough that it will serve the students and the campus community even better than when I was around. To that extent, this past fall, after all of the harvesting was done and there was no actual work to be done in the garden itself, I started advertising the garden around campus, looking for students who wanted to be involved in the planning stages. At that point, Heather Zupin, Christine Peralta, and Sarah Fardoush responded to my notices, and we started meeting regularly to discuss what needed to be done to put together a successful garden the following year. Heather, not committed to one facet of gardening or another, agreed to serve as the Chief Information Officer, the groups administrative coordinator. I told her that this could be considered an internship, something to put on her resume if the workload was enough. She agreed and now she is responsible to make sure everything happens. She is the one who takes over if I die (as Zack puts it). Since it was fall and we had a lot of organic materials to take care of, Christine agreed to become our expert on composting. Of course she had no previous knowledge of composting processes, but she has researched and has started a compost pile in the garden. Sarah was eager to get involved with the garden planning and execution, so I made her the Assistant Garden Coordinator. She is in charge of knowing what goes on in the garden and helping people to get it done.
On that note, just this evening we had our first gardening workshop, and I think it was a real success. Sarah put together a brief presentation and handouts about how to plan a garden. It was concise, well-informed (I liked that she skimmed a lot of blogs to learn personal experiences regarding the gardening principles), and comprehensive. Those in attendance were respectful, attentive and responsive to her remarks. They had numerous questions, which Sarah fielded well, and, overall, I think the event was a success--where we all were all the more excited for and committed to the garden than before.
Returning to the brief overview of the garden up to this point, not long after we started meeting, the members of the group newly formed to help organize the garden began inviting friends to participate. Before long we doubled in size. Sarah brought aboard Fanny Shao to help with a website. Zack Good, an experienced landscaper, was happy to lead up the construction and maintenance of the physical facilities of the garden plot. Ashley Boston volunteered to plan and take responsibility for growing flowers in the garden. It was only the beginning of December and we were in motion to have a full-fledged committee to organize the garden on behalf of the Environmental Club.
At this point, I should admit that when I went shopping last fall for people to get involved on the planning level of the garden I didn't do it in the name of the Environmental Club. I advertised under the name: Stony Brook Gardens. Previous to my involvement in the garden, the plot had been named: Stony Brook Organic Garden. Well, last spring I did not strictly follow organic methods as outlined in any certification policy; so, I didn't feel like we could say we were organic. At the same time, I am all about branding ever since I lived with a brand strategist; I wanted to come up with a name that lead to something bigger than what were currently were. 'Stony Brook Gardens' doesn't just name the geographic location of the garden, it associates with both the university of Stony Brook and the village of Stony Brook. It crosses boundaries. The use of 'gardens' doesn't simply denote the garden we are working with: as a noun, it indicates that we are or at least will be involved with more than just one garden, and as a verb, it expresses action in the present: Stony Brook Gardens! A community gardens. And that is exactly what we want for the garden, to be a place of community action, people working together based on principles of volunteerism, shared leadership (everyone is in charge of something and we all commit to help them with their stewardship), positive reinforcement (if you don't get something done, we aren't going to complain--if you hadn't volunteered to do it in the first place, it wouldn't have gotten done otherwise--we are happy for whatever you are able to make happen), and sustainability (we'd rather re-use, make from what's available or re-invent than use virgin, industrially produced materials).
This year the labeling of organic is not an issue because just this evening someone in attendance at the workshop was very interested in making the garden one hundred percent organic and volunteered to do the research and teach us what we need to do to make the garden organic this semester.
That is Stony Brook Gardens. 'Gardens' is both the present tense of the verb and the plural noun in hopes that one day we will have enough involvement to share our skills and resources to other places in the community. For example, we can work with the garden at the Southampton campus. I would love it if the group could help with a garden at the veterans' home near campus. As well, we could help with caring for gardens at public schools in the area. Stony Brook Gardens could represent much more than the little plot of land along the edge of a huge parking lot with no water source a mile south of campus the university has given us at this point. It could be more. For now, I am happy for all that it has become.
In the current semester, we were able to pick up right were we left off: everyone who was interested in helping organize the garden last semester came back this semester. What's more, the new co-presidents of the Environmental Club, Jimmy and Greg, have reaffirmed the club's interest in and support for the garden and its place in the club's agenda. In fact, they even showed up for the workshop "Planning Your Garden" this evening. The are working with administration to make sure the garden has a secure place on campus for the length of the upcoming growing season and beyond. To bring our efforts to plan the garden in line with our place as a breakout group of the Environmental Club, I now call our gardening group the Garden Organizing Committee (GOC), a committee of the Environmental Club.
As I said before, this evening was a great success. To see the interest and the active involvement by all those in attendance, I felt like something was happening. These students who had confessed no substantial gardening knowledge were learning what it meant to plan in February amidst the cold and the snow for something that would happen in late September, after months of sun and warmth. We are preparing a new generation of farmers, people who plan now for food they will eat in seven months, who are aware and appreciative of the cycles of the earth and how they fit in.
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