Campus Garden aims to grow

The Campus Garden, located by the Green 3 parking lot and the Clark College Building, while currently small, might be poised to grow as folks from the Gardening Club and the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice have ambitions to expand its size and utility at WSU Vancouver.

Desiree Hellegers, english professor and director of the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice, is looking forward to integrating the garden into relevant courses, using the food to assist with food insecurity on campus, and create a sense of community and collaboration in the garden.

Hellegers said that the plan is to integrate the garden into course curricula wherever it is relevant on campus. This is a project for the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice that will continue throughout the next term.

The garden has already been incorporated, to an optional extent, in some classes.

“A lot of Vancouver high schools have some form of horticultural program and so we’re really excited to be able to provide that kind of ground engagement with the garden,” Hellegers said.

Hellegers clarified that there are really two parts to the campus garden, one being the community garden managed by the Gardening Club, and the other being directed by Julian Ankney, the director of Native American Programs at WSUV, which is the “Indigenous, traditional, ecological, cultural knowledge part of the garden.”

When discussing food insecurity, Hellegers praised the work and the potential of the garden to tackle the issue. “They planted and harvested I think 10 pounds of green beans that went to a local food bank over the summer” she said.

Hellegers also added their looking to help sustain the Cougar Pantry and provide more fresh food on campus. She said there was already a significant amount of food or housing insecure students on campus even before the pandemic, and that it has possibly grown.

For the future, Hellegers said that the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice is currently looking for a fencing company to build cedar wood fencing, and that the Gardening Club is looking to recruit more students to help with the garden, while the Collective will be raising more funds for the garden.

Hellegers said the garden is a “critical site” for outdoor learning, while praising the capacity of the garden to provide students more chances to work outside and work together with a sense of community.

“The garden will be a great place for students to meet and connect with other students and also faculty and staff in a less formal way,” she said.