Lately there has been a lot of talk about a new, exciting garden on campus. Volunteers have constructed a burlap sack garden on top of the Life Sciences roof to grow a variety of vegetables.  Over 90 volunteers will weed, water, and maintain the garden through the summer months, and will harvest the fruits of their labor this fall.

An additional benefit to this project is the hope the green roof will effectively cool down the building, helping save energy and reducing the carbon footprint of the campus.

Check out this video to learn more about the gardens, and read the article below, written by Samantha Lefebvre and published in the 5/5/10 edition of the UMD Statesman.

Before: A vast, hot, vacant cement slab.

After: Straw bales covered in coffee bean burlap sacks and arranged in four large rectangle plots with two feet of soil nestled in the frame of the bales.

The newly constructed straw bale vegetable gardens, located on the roof of the Life Science building and to the right of the upper greenhouse on Kirby Drive, have provided another opportunity for UMD in becoming a more sustainable campus. The project is part of an on-going collaboration that focuses on campus gardens that produce edible foods as well as develop educational opportunities for food-raising at UMD.

The gardens, which broke ground two weeks ago, will be planted and maintained by around 90 volunteers made up of faculty, professors and students. The project will create a space where individuals from all areas of campus can work together on something that the university as a whole will benefit from.

"We tend to spend most of our time in our own little bunkers," said Anthropology Professor David Syring. "This project lets us come together and meet some really great people we don't usually talk to."

For the past few years Syring's senior seminar has conducted team-based research focused on sustainability.

"This year we have focused more so on food sustainability," Syring said. "This project will allow us the convenience of conducting our research on campus."

According to the Head of Grounds, Peggy Dahlberg, the plan is to plant vegetables in each of the four beds and cycle them throughout the two to three years that the bales and the burlap sacks are expected to last. This rotation will allow the plants to use up all the nutrients in the soil. Even though most of the planting and maintenance will take place after the spring semester, plans for a fall harvest festival are in the works.

"We plan on planting all types of vegetables," Dahlberg said. "The soil is deep enough that we can probably even plant sweet potatoes."

The idea for the gardens came from 2,000 miles away in San Francisco. In 2008 the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden was constructed and planted in front of the City Hall. In just the 2008 summer harvest alone the gardens produced more than 100 pounds of fresh organic produce, according to the San Francisco Government website.

"We heard about this and decided to try the same thing here on campus," said facilities staff Steve Schilling. "There was a lot of interest for various groups so the only big question was where to put the raised beds."

The new gardening endeavor not only focuses on and teaches students about sustainability with food, it also serves as an experiment in temperature control over the Life Sciences building that lies beneath the soil and straw bales.

"We have this large concrete space that has absolutely nothing on it," Dahlberg said. "We might as well make use out of it and see if it makes any significant changes to our campus."

The raised bed gardens will act like a "green" roof above the Life Sciences lecture halls in hopes to cool the temperature of the rooms below.

"It will be really interesting to see if it works and really cools the site off," Dahlberg said. "We will keep records and hopefully it will lead to the removal of the concrete slab and the building of a completely 'green' roof."

The total cost of the project was around $5,000 with most of the money coming from the Campus Beautification Fund and the burlap sacks were donated by Alakef Coffee Roasters in downtown Duluth, according to assistant facilities manager Candice Richards.

Even though the new gardening effort may not generate as much fresh produce as the San Francisco Victory Gardens, the campus will be affected by the addition, no matter how small.

"It will be symbolic, mostly," said Environmental Studies major Sam Popham. "Students and visitors can see that the UMD community is conscious of the need for sustainability, and hopefully that will inspire others to consider the problems associated with our current system."

Planting of the vegetables won't get underway until the school year is over but volunteers for the summer planting and maintenance of the gardens is needed.

"This is only our first year doing this," Richards said. "It's a leap of faith and we are hoping that the interest in this project will make people want to help out."

If you would like to volunteer over the summer, contact Brian Bluhm at the Office of Civic Engagement at bluh0020@d.umn.edu.