Home Farming came to Loyola Marymount University this week as part of a national effort to build the grow-your-own-food movement, or at least teach people how to green their thumbs by experimenting with urban farming.
The Home Farming campaign is a joint effort of the Detroit-based non-profit Urban Farming and Kraft Foods, which is promoting the program in connection with its Triscuit cracker brand. With the slogan “Plant a Seed, Grow a Movement,” they are trying to turn every American into a locavore.
LMU’s home farming demonstration project – 21 raised beds planted with an array of vegetables and flowers – was installed adjacent to the campus greenhouse and Pereira Hall. LMU students from the Lions Garden Club did most of the planting. They were assisted by LMU groundskeepers and Morgan Carey of Victoriousgreen.com, who installed one of his custom, handmade, wood-frame garden beds, which are constructed without nails or petroleum-based products.
Part of a Home Farming Day celebration, the LMU plantathon was paired Tuesday with a similar garden initiative in Tampa, FL. The twin, bi-coastal events at LMU and Tampa were beamed by satellite to a Jumbotron set up at the headquarter-event of the day in Madison Square Park in mid-town New York. There, would-be farmers on their lunch break or tourists visiting in the Big Apple picked up planting tips, were given free seedlings for their own gardens, and sampled homegrown goodies at the Home Farming Café.
Urban Farming, the non-profit, began in 2005 in Detroit and has grown to more than 15,000 garden sites in the United States and in several other countries. This is the second year it has paired with Kraft to spread the gospel of grow-your-own. Together, they have begun 65 gardens in 25 cities.
Joyce Lapinsky, board co-chair of Urban Farming, described her organization as an “empowerment” project. “We are teaching people how to plant at home,” she said. “We show how easy it is and that you can plant anywhere, whether it is in a pot on your balcony, a small garden in a raised bed in your yard or in a farm in Wisconsin.”
The driving force at LMU includes Presidential Professor in Urban Ecology Eric Strauss, Sustainability Coordinator Joe Rasmussen and key members of the Lions Garden Club, including Senior Urban Studies Major April Sandifer, Senior Environmental Science Major Briana Bergstrom, Sophomore Humanities Major Hilary Scheppers, School of Education Doctoral Candidate Bryce Davis, Senior Economics Major Bryon Erwin.
Rasmussen, whose role at LMU is to promote green initiatives, pointed out that the new LMU garden is blossoming where there used to be grass. “We transformed the lawn into a beautiful garden,” he said, and also thanked faculty, including Strass, for “working hard to support the project and integrating it into their teaching and classes.”
Sandifer, who came to the planting event after getting up at 4 a.m. to finish her last undergraduate term paper, said the garden and the work that goes into it gives her a deeper connection to the campus, to her schoolmates and has fostered cooperation across a variety of disciplines.
“It really appeals to me that such a diverse group of people can come together and plant food and do it in a cooperative way,” she said. “We have participation from facilities management, Seaver College, urban studies, environmental science. This one initiative brings together a wide group of people who otherwise would never have met.”
Work on the LMU garden is a continuing project. The plantings include several types of tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, bok choy, basil, arugula, strawberries and assorted herbs.
“It is another reason to come back to campus,” said Sandifer, who graduates in May.
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April 18, 2011
News Contact: Peter M. Warren | 310.338.2389 | peter.warren@lmu.edu
