Harvard, Harvard, how does your garden grow?<\/p>\n
With plenty of rain.<\/p>\n
At the dedication of the Harvard Community Garden<\/a> on Mt. Auburn Street on Sunday (April 18), well-wishers huddled gratefully under a blue tarp noisy with rain. Nearby, green lawn chairs sat empty.<\/p>\n But the garden at 27 Holyoke Place offers sunny messages: that food can grow in an urban backyard; that a garden is a living laboratory for diverse academic pursuits; and that an open garden encourages community.<\/p>\n The plot in front of Lowell House<\/a> \u2014 560 square feet of growing space \u2014 is a lesson in local food and sustainability that matches the University\u2019s environmental ethic, said Zachary Arnold \u201910. \u201cOur tagline is: a beautiful and productive space.\u201d<\/p>\n The Eliot House senior is one of a dozen or so undergraduates who helped to organize a new club, the Harvard College Garden Project, a year in the making.<\/p>\n The garden, consisting of 25 raised beds spaced along stone-dust patios, is supervised by the Center for Health and the Global Environment<\/a> (CHGE) at Harvard Medical School. Collaborators include the Office for Sustainability<\/a> (OFS), the University Planning Office<\/a>, Landscape Services<\/a>, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>, and the Food Literacy Project,<\/a> a division of Harvard University Hospitality and Dining Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n Food harvested from the garden \u2014 lettuce, onions, peas, and other traditional New England kitchen crops \u2014 will be used in on-site tastings and demonstrations, consumed at undergraduate dining halls, sold at the Food Literacy Project\u2019s two farmers\u2019 markets, or donated to the Greater Boston Food Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n Within a year, organizers say, the garden will expand. On the wish list are trellises, more raised beds, work stations, storage, and a system for harvesting rainwater.<\/p>\n The site will also serve as an outdoor classroom and as a gathering place. Arnold called the new garden a \u201cmultiuse space.\u201d<\/p>\n This summer, two full-time interns will tend the garden, said the project\u2019s acting director, Kathleen Frith, who is assistant director at CHGE. They also will develop protocols for how the garden might be used in current Harvard courses.<\/p>\n In the fall, she said, faculty will be invited to a forum on ways to bring the garden into the classroom. The hope is to get faculty to use the garden in existing courses, said Frith, not just in the sciences, but for poetry, languages, and the arts.<\/p>\n Over time, courses will emerge that are specific to the garden, said Frith. Lessons in urban agriculture will include growing on vertical surfaces, composting, and water-conservation strategies.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look out here, you see a garden,\u201d said botanist Donald Pfister<\/a>, who made brief remarks from the shelter of the tarp. \u201cI see a whole lot of thesis projects.\u201d<\/p>\n He said there is academic work to be done, for instance on integrated pest management, urban habitats, and the microbial composition of the garden\u2019s soils.<\/p>\n Pfister, an authority on the biology of fungi, is Harvard\u2019s Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany and acting director of the Harvard University Herbaria<\/a>. He told the small crowd, \u201cI want you to think about this as your laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n Pfister is also dean of the Harvard Summer School, which runs during a peak season for studying plants. \u201cTo be able to be out in it,\u201d he said of the garden-as-classroom, \u201cis the great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Six decades ago, Harvard had a full-scale botanical garden at Garden and Linnaean streets. \u201cThat was the ultimate,\u201d said Pfister, and included classroom space, plant displays, greenhouses, and outdoor growing beds.<\/p>\n But the intent of the Harvard Community Garden is wider than plant science, making it a kind of first at Harvard. \u201cOur center works at the intersection of human health and environmental issues,\u201d Frith said. \u201cFor me, growing food locally fits right in that intersection.\u201d<\/p>\n It will be a boon to social well-being, she added, and has already brought students, faculty, staffers, and neighbors together. \u201cThat\u2019s going to be the healthiest part of this garden: learning and getting to know and working with everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Ilana Cohen stood nearby. She was one of eight landscape architecture students at the Graduate School of Design who helped to design the garden. (The others were Erin Kelly, Rebecca Bartlett, Amy Whitesides, Dorothy Tang, Abhishek Sharma, Xue Zhou, and Athens Qin.)<\/p>\n The project \u2014 including a design charrette this winter \u2014 brought the benefits of community and collaboration, agreed Cohen. \u201cIt\u2019s been great to meet people from other institutions within the University. We wind up in our separate silos quite easily.\u201d<\/p>\n Evelynn M. Hammonds<\/a>, dean of Harvard College<\/a>, spoke from under the tarp, with a crimson-striped umbrella furled at her side. \u201cIt\u2019s really a great start for Harvard and the College,\u201d she said of the garden. \u201cThis will be the first space, but it won\u2019t be the last space.\u201d<\/p>\n