Collegeville, PA: New Community Garden

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Tue Apr 19 07:37:00 2005 Pacific Time

      Organic Garden at Ursinus College Is Growing a Community
       COLLEGEVILLE, Pa., April 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- Earth Week is a year-long commitment for Katherine Diana, an Ursinus College junior who has been planning and planting the college's new organic garden as its first growing season gets underway. The garden began as a greening project for a class, Issues in Environmental Studies, and evolved last year into a research project for Ursinus' flagship undergraduate research program, Summer Fellows. 
       "My hope is that the garden will provide academic research opportunities, a community atmosphere, and produce for our campus food service, while promoting sustainable agriculture and environmental awareness," said Diana, of Robbinsville, N.J. 
       For her efforts the Garden Club of America recognized the project with its Award for Summer Environmental Studies. She is one of five students in Ursinus College's Environmental Studies program who recently received accolades and scholarships, including two of the nation's 80 Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarships for excellence in environmental studies. 
       Since Ursinus' Environmental Studies major was launched five years ago, a growing environmental awareness on campus has been marked by recycling, new classes, research ongoing community ecosystem restoration projects, a recent grant shared with the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy in Schwenksville and projects including the organic garden, where volunteers from environmental studies classes helped build a fence and raise beds. By mid-May, the garden will be fully transplanted with seedlings raised in the greenhouse of Thomas Hall, the life sciences building. Short green shoots of herbs, tomatoes, foxglove, zinnias, peppers, and marigolds are beginning to peep out of the soil. The garden will also include raspberries, strawberries, zucchini, beans, peas, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, and other flowers. 
       Diana will oversee volunteers caring for and harvesting the garden this summer. She hopes it can become a source of community and outdoor education for Ursinus, and has talked with the college food service about using the herbs and vegetables, and hopes to gain support of the community as the garden grows. 
       "I am excited to work on this project not only because I love gardening, but also because it has generated so much interest and cultivated positive relationships," she said. Ursinus, founded in 1869, is a highly selective, nationally ranked, independent, coeducational, liberal arts college, located on a scenic, wooded 165-acre campus, 28 miles from Center City Philadelphia. 
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       CONTACT: Wendy Greenberg, Ursinus Media Relations, 610-409-3300 

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