University of Maryland News

Public Health Garden—Cultivating Research, Fostering Community

By Lauren Brown

Rooftop gardens on campus have spread to three dining halls this year through the work of students and Dining Services: —South Campus Dining Hall’s roof now features new planter boxes recycled from wooden pallets as well as a sound system, lights and picnic tables. The garden is available for anyone to use for pleasure or research. —The new 251 North dining hall is topped with 2,000 sedum plants that help keep the building’s interior cool. —A garden of tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and berry bushes continues to grow atop the Diner. Student volunteers and interns are tending all three gardens. Greg Thompson, assistant director of Dining Services, calls the student involvement “amazing,” particularly at South Campus. “We want them to put their own mark on it,” he says.  Check out the blog here: http://publichealthgarden.blogspot.com/

The jackhammer was punching through concrete at an ear-splitting volume only 100 feet from student Deborah Dramby. But as she planted a clump of sunflowers last week outside the School of Public Health, she couldn’t stop grinning.

The contractors’ work was bringing to life the Public Health Garden.

The student–run project, on a slope next to the Eppley Recreation Center, has already produced a motley array of herbs, vegetables and flowers. This summer’s heavy construction work will make way for the garden’s focus on research and teaching of eco-friendly practices.

Allison Lilly, a master’s student studying environmental health and one of the forces behind the garden’s creation, says it will allow faculty, staff and students to work together, serve as a community gathering place and provide another showcase for the university’s commitment to sustainability.

“I love the idea of conceptualizing the land-grant university in an urban setting, and how the University of Maryland can move to the forefront of the new food movement, promoting agricultural sustainability,” Lilly says.

The group got permission last year to establish a garden outside the school, but didn’t have money to make it happen. Then she met Rachael Tennant, a graduate student who had been securing funding to build a community garden, but had no land.

Tennant, Lilly and other team members worked with Facilities Management to determine costs, went on to win more than $15,000 from the university’s Green Fund, joined with Professor Dennis Nola’s landscape architecture students on a final design and mobilized volunteers.  

“It’s so academically and personally fulfilling,” says Tennant, who’s studying sustainable development and conservation biology.

In April, they brought in 32 goats to clear weeds from the 0.2-acre site, then began putting in the plants, many of which were grown from seed in the university’s greenhouse.

A rotating group of 20 students, (mostly new) alumni and even community members now take turns tending and harvesting the tomatoes, peppers, beans and much more. They’ve taken contributions and swapped plants with the university’s St. Mary’s Garden Club, St. Mary’s College of Maryland and more.

Potomac Valley Brick and Supply Co., whose president, Alan Richardson, attend stairway and construction of retaining walls leveled out much of the site to be handicapped-accessible and to allow for a “front yard” of landscaping to blend in with the rest of the campus.

Later this summer, raised beds will be installed for research and academic areas. Dramby, the first student in the Institute of Applied Agriculture’s certificate program in sustainable agriculture, will be testing farming practices such as integrated pest management and crop rotation. Professor Allen Davis, in civil and environmental engineering, will build a rain garden to model new methods to capture and treat runoff. Facilities Management will try a new method to collect air-conditioning unit discharge.

Over the long term, they intend to keep following the landscaping design, including planting many more fruit trees and berry bushes outside of Eppley and to build amphitheater-like seating at the garden where people can meet if they don’t want to dig. Organizers are also talking about teaming up with the Maryland Food Co-op or the Food and Nutrition Club’s lunch program to ensure the campus gets to enjoy the harvested food.

Bobby Tjaden ’08, a university landscape architect working with the students and the contractors, volunteers at the site. He envisions Master Gardeners offering training there and student volunteers representing the campus arboretum and botanical gardens designing creative irrigation solutions or proposing new layouts for planting beds.

“It’s a really great project,” he says. “We can take underused land on campus and make it something that’s useful and sustainable, and gives a place for students to claim ownership.”