Garden plot grows at CLU

California Lutheran University is building a community garden, expanding its efforts to create an environmentally sustainable campus.

The garden will connect students to the local environment and make sustainability part of their everyday experience, said Kayla Kilpatrick, 20, a junior majoring in geology.

"This is what we should be doing," said Kilpatrick, who will oversee the garden. "It's not that difficult to come out here and weed for a while, dig for a carrot that tastes so much better than anything you'd pick up in a grocery store."

CLU's fledgling garden is part of a nationwide movement encouraging people to eat local products. As part of that movement, people now are getting more of their fruits and vegetables at farmers markets or through programs that provide participants boxes of local produce every week, said Sam Thomas, a religion professor and co-chairman of CLU's sustainability task force.

The movement also has spread to colleges, including St. Mary's College near Oakland and Willamette University in Oregon, which have started their own community gardens.

St. Mary's has linked its garden to what students are studying, including the environment, politics, education, and health and nutrition, said Steve Woolpert, dean of the school of liberal arts. The school's dining hall uses much of the produce that's grown, and some is donated to local food banks, he said.

"It adds one more teaching space, in addition to the pleasure of it," Woolpert said. "It's become something that enriches campus life."

People at CLU have been talking about a community garden for a while, Thomas said. They wanted the garden to be part of the university's other sustainability efforts, which include recycling, saving water and designing a LEED-certified building that meets environmental standards.

"It was one of those things that kept coming up," Thomas said. "We had this kind of dreamy idea that this used to be a working ranch, that we'd be reconnecting with what this land actually was."

Then last spring, Professor Linda Ritterbush taught a seminar on creating a food garden. Students read Michael Pollen, whose best-selling books on food include "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food." They also read Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," an account of her family's effort to eat only food raised in their neighborhood or that they had grown in their garden. Students started a demonstration garden at Holy Trinity Lutheran church, down the street from the campus.

"Our students are already showing us they've been affected and changed by this," said Ritterbush, who teaches geology and environmental science.

"It's emotionally and psychologically uplifting to garden. We need to create opportunities for that to happen."

During a service day in late September, CLU's community garden got its actual start, when students, professors and staff members built raised beds that have transformed a dry, weedy patch just behind the softball field. This week, a small group put in a cover crop for the winter.

"Students can just come out here anytime," said Ray Ostrander, 21, a senior majoring in geology. "What better place to do this than a small liberal arts campus?"

For now, the garden is being funded by CLU's facilities department, as part of its campus beautification program, Thomas said. But organizers have applied for grants that they hope will provide additional funding.

Meanwhile, they're still working out what they'll grow and how they'll arrange the logistics of composting, amending the soil, rotating crops and harvesting.

They're also still figuring what to do with the produce they grow. Some may go the college's dining hall. Or they might sell it on campus or at local farmers markets. They definitely will donate at least part of the crop to local food banks.

"My goal is to make sustainability a much bigger part of campus," Kilpatrick said. "It needs to be part of CLU everyday."

--- Published in the Ventura County Star on Nov. 6, 2010