School of Public Health Breaks Ground on New Garden

Some in the area seem to have caught the garden bug.

No, not the insects that are relentlessly feeding on your tomatoes. We’re talking about what could be a new trend in the area for teaching gardens.

Imagine a garden on a college campus, tended to by members of the faculty, staff and volunteers, and used to demonstrate proper gardening techniques to cultivate a variety of fruits and vegetables, including carrots, string beans, raspberries, strawberries, and hot peppers.

Such a teaching garden exists near the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, but it’s just one of several that seem to be sprouting up in the area.

“My impression is that either interest is increasing or previously latent interest has become better organized,” said Stephen Jascourt of College Park’s . He lists new teaching gardens in Greenbelt and the Fort Totten Metro station area as examples.

“Both of those are recent additions to the scene in our vicinity and seem to have attracted a lot of interest and vitality,” Jascourt said.

As for the campus project, Allison G. Lilly, the Public Health Garden President, and Deborah Dramby, the garden’s farm manager, tend to the 0.20-acre plot along with 10 volunteers every Wednesday between 5 and 7 p.m.

“It’s not just for students,” Lilly said. “It’s an open forum to all contributors and gardeners interested in a healthy environment.

Their goal is more than teaching the community how to grow food, but how to do it organically.

“The whole thing is to begin a local food movement free of pesticides and herbicides. We use different methods of pest-control,” Dramby said.

A similar undertaking in horticulture education is going on further north, where the Student Discovery Garden is currently flourishing at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

“Our mission is to teach agriculture to our youth,” said Jenny Allen, Program Manager of the Area Office of Outreach Diversity and Equal Opportunity with the Beltsville Area Diversity Taskforce (BADT).

BADT’s Science, Technology, Education, and Outreach (STEO) planned the project in the fall of 2009, following First Lady Michelle Obama’s effort to have a garden as a teaching tool for urban youth.

And to the east of College Park are the Three Sisters Gardens, spearheaded by CHesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society. in May, CHEARS co-founder Maggie Cahalan said the purpose of the three gardens is to teach others how to provide for themselves in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

Such undertakings have proven to be group efforts, and more complex than tossing a few seeds into the ground.

To start the Public Health Garden, Lilly and Dramby worked alongside masters student Rachel Tennant and garden Vice President Rachel Rosenberry-Goldstein to attain a grant of a little more than $15,000 from Green Fund and the Office of Sustainability.

Lilly said that the garden team networked with a handful of other area teaching gardens, both on and off the campus, as well as businesses.

Among them were Eco-Goats, which provided 32 goats to eat weeds 3-feet high to clear the garden plot.

“We had 30 goats for two days eating up all the weeds before the garden setup,” Lilly said, adding that the 32 goats and the garden setup together cost $1,300.

To learn more about the Public Health Garden, visit the team's blog.