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Hay Covering the Plant Beds at the Community Learning Garden in Offseason
This photo was taken on December 2nd, 2024 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. The photo is of the Community learning garden on campus and is highlighting the newly placed hay over the plant beds. This hay provides an ecosystem service to the planting areas as they will not be growing crops in the coming months. In fact, the hay is used to protect the soil from weathering and provide nutrients back into the soil as no plants during the winter season will be able to do so. This is very important for keeping the health of the soil high for spring planting. The community learning garden serves many purposes on our campus, but mainly it provides local and fresh produce to those in need at the campus pantry. 100% of all the produce harvested, that meets standards, is shipped across campus to the South market area where the pantry is located. Students can enter the pantry with no questions asked and fill an entire bag per visit. This is one of the ways that the community learning garden successfully tackles sustainable development goal #2: zero hunger. Although the produce is only accessible to students and faculty on campus, it is a great start to solving zero hunger. It is even better that this program is completely free for the user.
The other main goal that the community learning garden aims to solve is SDG #4: quality education. Many classes, clubs, and service opportunities are run through the garden and all strive to further educate the student body. The entire project itself was a grant given to students by the University and was a majority student run initiative. Now, students learn all about planting and harvesting, and everything in between. This garden is truly an amazing gateway to accomplish two SDGs, while providing ecosystem services to our campus (makes the alleyway a lot prettier) and literally providing for our campus on multiple levels.
Hay Covering the Plant Beds at the Community Learning Garden in Offseason
This photo was taken on December 2nd, 2024 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. The photo is of the Community learning garden on campus and is highlighting the newly placed hay over the plant beds. This hay provides an ecosystem service to the planting areas as they will not be growing crops in the coming months. In fact, the hay is used to protect the soil from weathering and provide nutrients back into the soil as no plants during the winter season will be able to do so. This is very important for keeping the health of the soil high for spring planting. The community learning garden serves many purposes on our campus, but mainly it provides local and fresh produce to those in need at the campus pantry. 100% of all the produce harvested, that meets standards, is shipped across campus to the South market area where the pantry is located. Students can enter the pantry with no questions asked and fill an entire bag per visit. This is one of the ways that the community learning garden successfully tackles sustainable development goal #2: zero hunger. Although the produce is only accessible to students and faculty on campus, it is a great start to solving zero hunger. It is even better that this program is completely free for the user.
The other main goal that the community learning garden aims to solve is SDG #4: quality education. Many classes, clubs, and service opportunities are run through the garden and all strive to further educate the student body. The entire project itself was a grant given to students by the University and was a majority student run initiative. Now, students learn all about planting and harvesting, and everything in between. This garden is truly an amazing gateway to accomplish two SDGs, while providing ecosystem services to our campus (makes the alleyway a lot prettier) and literally providing for our campus on multiple levels.