~ Earl's Garden ~: May 2011

Hello friends!
It seems that a lot of people may want to know more about the garden. Here are some answers to popular questions...

1. Brief summary, inspiration, and benefits
The inspiration for starting Earl's Garden, a student-run garden in a residential area of the UC San Diego campus, came from the Resident Dean of Warren College taking on a tour of the college and sharing different visions she had with me. I took up her specific idea of creating a garden because I was inspired to provide the opportunity for students to grow their own food and connect with nature and one another. The Earl's Garden project benefits the environment on a local scale. The soil that was once lifeless is now full of microbial and insect life. The garden is also a location that supports biodiversity by hosting native, insect, and bird attracting plants. The garden benefits the community because it provides with with a peaceful place to connect with nature, serving as a therapeutic retreat as well as an educational and social center.

2. Goals of the garden and how we can accomplish them
The goals of the garden are to give students the opportunity to grow their own food, enrich the community, and increase social activity. When I began planning for the project, I hoped I would accomplish these goals. I plan (and we do) accomplishing these goals by having open volunteer days to allow students to grow their own food and help with the overall efforts and maintenance of the garden. In order to enrich the community, we publicize involvement opportunities to the college in which the garden is located. We build up the Warren College community also by allowing residential advisors and Warren College organizations have volunteer days at the garden. Our last goal of increasing social activity is met by networking with other student organizations and allowing them to unite together in the garden space to plant a tree or other plants.

3. Description of project
The garden project has been full of complexities to get to the point we are now. It started with an idea. I was inspired by the idea of having a community garden with my college campus, and this desire to provide students with such a place kept me going through the months of meetings, intense planning, and blood and sweat to get the garden established.

The entire project currently consists of open Sunday volunteer days, two interns running separate projects for their major, a volunteer that is doing a specific project for extra credit, a UCSD alum maintaining the space and planting, four plot owners, one unity plot established by seven student organizations, and a garden coordinator maintaining all of the connections with the students, organizations, and college residential life office by bi-weekly meetings.

The garden is structured by a coordinator communicating with all of the people involved and reporting progress of the garden to the community. The two interns serve separate functions. One intern serves as a researcher for ways to correctly maintain life and attract biodiversity to the garden. The other intern created and maintains the native plant garden within the larger garden and aids in tabling events, co-running volunteer days, and encourages involvement with the garden to the campus.

Activities within the garden occur by students owning their own plots by their schedule. These plot owners have true ownership of their plots because they come and water and maintain them whenever is convenient for them. All the plot owners know how to use the watering system. The coordinator checks in with the plot owners periodically if there is any problem and also to ask if they are interested in renewing their plots for the next quarter.

The other and main activities within the garden occur on arranged or Sunday volunteer days. We have had student organizations and student organization boards volunteer as a group. We also have Sunday volunteer days from 11am-2pm where students with different backgrounds attend and help with different garden projects going on.

The last part of the project is with publicity. We are currently working on creating clear signage to encourage involvement with the garden. We are also publicizing about the garden on a larger scale through leaving brochures, being included on weekly list-serv emails, and tabling at events.

Native Plants of Earl's Garden:
Earl's currently has a handful of native plant species of southern California growing in its very own garden! Particularly, four different species were planted by Tate Perrine, our garden's Native Plant Design intern, and have already taken root and begun to grow.

Salvia leucophylla Point Sal; commonly known as "Low Purple Sage", this lovely plant is extremely fragrant and blooms rose-pink flowers that contrast its silvery-green foliage. You will see this plant blooming in the spring/summer.

Sisyrinchium bellum commonly known as "Blue-eyed Grass"; this dainty semi-herbacious perennial blooms small purple flowers in the sunlight only; it flowers January to June (especially right now!!)

Encelia californica common name "Coast Sunflower"; this species of sunflower is seen throughout regions of coastal sage scrub, especially out on the cliffs overlooking Scripps pier. It has a dark brown center with bright yellow petals. Flowers can be seen from February to June.

Mimulus puniceus common name "Red Monkey Flower": this native plant has trumpet-like brick-red flowers that bloom in the springtime (April-May); When the round, two-lipped white stigma is gently touched, the plant responds immediately and the lips close; the lips open again to allow bee or hummingbirds to deliver pollen. (Flowers can be seen now!)