April 29, 2011: UAA Sustainability Club hosts campus food garden

Friday, April 29, 4 p.m. SMH, Room 108l

Are you interested in food gardening? Are you a student, faculty or staff member at UAA who will be in town for the summer? The UAA Sustainability Club is starting a student garden and would like to welcome you to be a part of our garden project! No gardening experience necessary. We hope to keep the time commitment to around two hours a week throughout the summer, with a few special events/workshops here and there.

If you have any questions, please contact the Sustainability Club at sustainuaa@gmail.com. There will be a gardener orientation meeting on Friday, April 29, at 4 p.m. in SMH, Room 108. In the meantime, here's a brief description of the project:

Sustainability Club Student Garden

"Growing" out of our values and interests in local food and sustainable, small scale agriculture, the UAA Sustainability Club has set out to build a garden on campus. We intend to establish a venue for all members of the UAA community to practice local food gardening and enjoy its many benefits -- educational, productive and therapeutic!

Although the garden will be student-led and recruitment efforts will be targeted at students, participation is open to students, faculty and staff alike. The harvests will be shared with the volunteers and the rest of the UAA community through open picnics and banquets throughout the season. Any food surpluses will be donated to local soup kitchens such as Bean's Cafe.

We intend to share the experience and educational benefits of the garden as broadly as possible through educational signs in the garden as well as on an Internet blog. In the future, we hope to see this project expand and develop into an ongoing gardening program that provides locally-produced food, internship opportunities for students and the chance for all members of UAA to participate in local, organic food gardening.

So if you've got spare time this summer and would like to get your hands dirty and learn about gardening in Alaska, come join us!

If you have questions, please email sustainuaa@gmail.com. Find us on Facebook.