LOCALnews

A Look at the Greening of the UDC Van Ness Campus

By Dorvall Bedford

The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) is becoming more green. As part of the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES), students are now growing their own edible plants in shared gardens all over the Van Ness campus, even up on the rooftops. The gardens signify an important change to the Van Ness campus, according to Professor Sabine O’Hara. Over the past few decades, much of the ground and roofs were concrete and asphalt. Now they’ve been replaced with permeable pavers, which help with collecting rainwater that will irrigate the greenery around the campus. “An exemplar of green infrastructure,” she said about the change. A few gardens on the main level of the campus (which is actually the roof over the garage levels), are home to some of the plants that the students are growing and can be seen as one walks around. One of these is tucked into a corner and surrounded by buildings, and is tended to by a garden club consisting of students, faculty, and staff. It’s entirely communal, so there are no individual plots. Instead, everyone in the club says what they want planted and takes care of the whole garden together. They share the bounty from the arugula, parsley, and other plants.. Nearby is a group of gardens that the CAUSES school calls the “Gardens of the Senses.” These gardens are filled with plants that stimulate touch, taste, and smell, according to O’Hara. The garden club is not limited to students and staff, O’Hara said. Community members also joined during the pandemic. “They will tell you it was like their lifeline during the shutdown,” she said. “A lot of us garden because we enjoy it.” Up on the roof top of UDC Building 44, where there was just gray concrete, there is now a blanket of green plants. Since the roof was not originally designed to hold a garden, CAUSES had to calculate how much weight it could bear. An interesting bonus of the rooftop food gardens is that they reduce the heat of buildings, saving on the costs of air conditioning.

According to O’Hara, this is the only agriculture program in the country where architecture is part of the education. “And there is a reason: because it’s the architects who calculate these kinds of things,” she said. CAUSES also has a kitchen where gardeners can take their harvests to process them. O’Hara says the school teaches more than how to garden and compost. They also provide education about food safety, sanitation, and nutrition. And the education is not limited to university students. On April 25, members of the SNAP-Ed program provided lessons to senior citizens about eating a variety of colors in their diets. According to acting Senior Program Coordinator Miranda Desmarais, SNAPEd works with local public schools and childcare centers to provide young children nutrition education. “We work on exposure,” Desmarais said. “We work on getting people comfortable with trying something that they’re not used to.” Program Coordinator and Chef Herbert Holden has been working closely with parents as well to promote healthier eating habits. His method of sculpting penguins out of eggplants has helped children convince their parents to cook with eggplant at home. “I help children teach their parents,” Holden said. O’Hara said there are two goals with the addition of community gardens to the Van Ness campus: environmental and social sustainability. Not only are the gardens promoting healthier diets and a greener school environment, but they are also bringing people closer. “People who have not been on the campus in a number of years will say, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ when they come now,” O’Hara said. “This is a complete transformation.” o

Dorvall Bedford is a journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an intern this semester with Washington Gardener. He is a native of Frederick, MD.

The Urban Greenhouse Challenge

By Hojung Ryu

Student teams are competing in a “Greenhouse Challenge” hosted by the Netherlands Embassy and University of the District of Columbia (UDC). The challenge started in November 2021 and goes through June 2022. The program aims to develop small urban food hubs where local communities can grow produce year-round for themselves. International students from all around the world formed 20 teams, with the goal of designing a food hub that is the most efficient and effective possible. The ultimate mission is to adopt the design and develop the winning plans at the East Capitol Urban Farm in Washington, DC.

The project includes creating an indoor production structure that will contribute to the quality of life for residents of a lower-income neighborhood in Washington, DC. The East Capitol Urban Farm, near the Capitol Heights metro station, had been a vacant lot until 2015. Since then, efforts to cultivate and transform the space into a multi-functional, environmentally conscious urban farm have been implemented through a competition similar to this challenge. The competition concept is to create a prototype that is an affordable, sustainable, and urban-resilient design. The significance of urban greenhouses is imperative to the environment. Controlling the weather and climate in an efficient greenhouse can offer a sustainable way to produce nutritious food all year long. “We are happy to share this connection with UDC. I sometimes have the feeling that not many Washingtonians are aware of what is going on in Ward 7 and what is being developed by UDC,” said Marianne Vaes, the Netherlands’ agricultural counselor to the U.S. “The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with a lot of environmental pressures that helped to create an innovative ag-tech community there, which is being used in the development of these greenhouses,” she said. Details of the competition are at https://urbangreenhousechallenge. nl/info. o

Hojung Ryu is a junior journalism and criminal justice double major at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. She is an intern this semester with Washington Gardener and is from Mahwah, NJ.

The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City

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GardenDC Podcast

The GardenDC podcast is all about gardening in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic area. The program is hosted by Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener Magazine, and features guest experts in local and national horticulture. The latest episodes include interviews with experts on trilliums, magnolias, and permaculture.

You can listen online at https:// washingtongardener.blogspot.com/ or on Spotify, Apple, etc. o