Harvard Garden Opens Officially

Most of the food that ends up in Harvard dining halls is grown off campus, but now students can observe the process of cultivating food in their own backyard. The Harvard Community Garden, which officially opened last weekend, was featured in this past weekend’s Earth Day celebration.

The Harvard Community Garden—located on Mt. Auburn Street near Lowell House—is the result of a collaboration between several University organizations, including the Environmental Action Committee, the Office for Sustainability, and the Food Literacy Project.

The garden’s name, “Harvard Community Garden,” beat out “Veggitas” and other alternatives in a vote by the Harvard community.

According to the project’s website, the raised-bed style garden will be used to create community awareness about the role of food in the environment and its effect on people’s health.

Two students have been selected to work as interns at the garden this summer. Their responsibilities will include not only tending to the garden itself, but also staffing the Harvard and Allston farmers’ markets, organizing community events involving the garden, and running a blog about the garden’s progress.

The interns will be allowed to eat what they grow, but some of the produce—which includes mizuna, arugala, onions, and chard—will either be donated to the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter or sold at higher-than-market prices to avoid competing with local producers at the farmers’ markets .

Louisa C. Denison ’11, a member of the Dudley Co-op and a former Currier House FLP Rep, said she thinks the garden will be useful because “Harvard students need to get some dirt under their fingernails.”

She added that she hopes people will use the garden as an educational experience. “I’d love for people to see this as an opportunity to become more educated about their environment and where food figures into it.”

Although community workdays will be organized by the garden administrators for community members to work on the garden, the site is always open to visitors.

“People have come from as far as Watertown,” Denison said. “It’s like they hear the cry of gardening.”