The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) has secured a piece of land near Leeds residence on campus to start a community garden.
Construction for the garden is starting as soon as possible and the GSA is looking for volunteers to help in this lengthy process. GSA president Kelly Black said he wants the garden to be constructed before snow starts falling.
At a meeting Oct. 2 the GSA held a town hall meeting to discuss with students what they wanted to do with the garden space.
The garden will allow students and community members to organically grow a variety of vegetables and plants.
“It could be flowers if they want,” project manager Chris Bisson said.
Bisson said they will give out space to grow on a first-come first- serve basis, though there is still debate about whether the garden will be run on an individual lot basis or in more of a communal way.
The garden will be located behind Leeds residence, between the P6 parking lot and a drainage swamp. A couple of areas were considered before coming down to this more definite placement.
“Leeds residence won over a couple of reasons. A, it’s really sunny and B, the university doesn’t have any plans to build anything there in the future,” Black said.
The garden will be not for profit, since its purpose is simply to allow students some food security and a knowledge of where their food comes from.
“All I eat here is junk food,” international business student Leen al Jaber said. “It’ll be fun to eat healthy for a change.”
The garden will include a number of features, including a garden shed that will harvest water into a 1,000-litre bin to allow the site water self-sufficiency. Another of the garden’s features will be a herb spiral which will bring a variety of growing conditions. It will regulate the quality of the soil allowing the growing of herbs from rosemary to basil.
The design of the garden ensures an optimal use of every space available for organic growth. Garden beds on the slope will be “terraced up” and separated by wood pallets.
“Wood pallets are your friends,” Bisson said.
This will be an ecological way of separating it and will provide space to grow plants vertically as well as on the actual garden beds, Bisson said.
The fence will be used as a growing space for adequate plants as well. The garden will also include compost space made out of wooden pallets.
The GSA doesn’t stand alone in this venture. The Food Centre, Aboriginal Service Centre, and Ontario Public Interest Research Group-Carleton are proud partners of the community garden. The Food Centre and aboriginal centre will have spots in the garden in order to let elders come and teach about medicinal herbs.
The funding of the garden is coming from an agreement put in place about 10 years ago when Carleton signed an exclusivity agreement with Coca-Cola.
It gives a percentage of sales of the Carleton’s Coca-Cola vending machines to student development funds.
After a many debates and discussion, the GSA was able to obtain the money to fund the community garden.
“They contribute to the food insecurities on campus, it’s the very least they can do,” Bisson said.
