Sam Dunaway | News Editor
Located behind the old education building is a small patch of land known as the WOU Campus Garden. The garden, now eight years old, aims to give students and community members the opportunity to learn how to garden while providing fresh produce to nearby food banks.
According to the WOU Campus Garden website, the mission of the garden is “to show how we can grow vegetables and fruit locally and sustainably. We want to see the garden being used as a practical and educational resource for the whole campus community.”
Campus Garden Coordinator Chrys Weedon is a junior studying American Sign Language. Weedon was excited to get involved with the campus garden first as a volunteer and now as the garden coordinator.
“My mom is an avid gardener, she’s been gardening since before I was born and I have a huge garden at home,” Weedon explained. “It’s just very therapeutic and you kind of lose track of time, at least for me, and I just really wanted to get involved with that. I miss it being here at school.”
The garden is run entirely by volunteers and supervised by communications professor Dr. Emily Plec. Volunteers help maintain the area by weeding, planting various types of plants and spreading awareness through tabling and events. Volunteers set their own schedules and have the first pick for the variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs planted in the garden. The rest of the plants produced by the garden are given to Western’s food pantry — where both students and community members alike can take advantage of the fresh produce.
The WOU Campus Garden practices organic gardening by only using organic compost for the plants and never spraying them with pesticides or herbicides.
When asked why a garden is important on campus, Weedon replied, “I think it’s important to have fresh food. I think a lot of college students don’t have the best diet just simply because they don’t have the resources… We grow good food. And it’s important also because it helps the environment. I think that mass farming can be very detrimental to the environment so the more food we can grow ourselves, the better.”
For more information on the WOU Campus Garden or how to become a volunteer, contact Chrys Weedon at cweedon16@wou.edu.
Contact the author at journalnews@wou.edu
Photo by: Paul F. Davis
