Students came out Thursday to the Campus Community Gardens, located at the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center , to be part of one of the first community gardens’ work days of ?the year.
Hilltop Garden and Nature Center allows the Campus Community Gardens use both their tools and their facilities.
Kit Gambill, senior and intern at the gardens, led students in the work day as they pulled weeds and planted the first of the ?fall crops.
“We have all kinds of things,” Gambill said.
“And we plant different varieties of things because the whole point of the garden is to learn and experiment.”
Lettuce and root crops were just a few of the things that were slated to be ?planted.
A public policy and geology major , Gambill said one of her favorite things about the community gardens is the diverse people ?it attracts.
“That’s the cool part about the garden — it attracts lots of people from different fields and backgrounds,” she said.
Binyan Li , a first-year graduate student , volunteered at the gardens for the first time.
“I know that grad school is going to be long and stressful, so I wanted something that would give me the opportunity to socialize outside of my department and also just do something that’s relaxing and fun,” ?Li said.
In addition to the weekly work days, the gardens will also be host to workshops throughout the year.
Some workshops will be in collaboration with professors around campus, students will learn, among other skills, how to cook fresh produce.
While volunteers get first pick at the produce, the Indiana Memorial Union receives the bulk of the garden’s produce, Gambill said.
“Then we take the compost from the IMU — so the food scraps and everything — and it goes into our compost,” she said. “So it’s a close-loop system.”
Work days will be every Monday and Thursday night this school year, Gambill said.
“Generally, if you’re a human who eats food, you’ll probably like the campus gardens,” she said.
