Those living at UC Santa Barbara or in the broader Isla Vista community may not see those spaces as ideal for gardening. Often apartments and dorms have little access to a gardening area, or their own patch of soil. The Edible Campus Program at UC Santa Barbara wants to show how gardening in these spaces is still possible and can lead to a greater sense of community.

ECP has six community gardens on campus and around I.V, and helped establish the Campus Farm. Courtesy of Edible Campus Program

The Edible Campus Program (ECP) was established in 2014 with the goal of addressing food insecurity and building community pride, according to the Director of Student Sustainability Initiatives and advisor of ECP Katie Maynard. ECP has six community gardens on campus and around I.V, and helped establish the Campus Farm which donates a portion of its harvests to the Associated Students (A.S.) Food Bank.

According to a report from the California Student Aid Commission, college students face higher food insecurity and lower access to nutrition compared to the average American household, 13.5% of which experienced food insecurity in 2023, the Department of Agriculture found. The report states that, from 2022-2023, 66% of student respondents reported being food insecure, 27% more than from 2018-2019. 

ECP’s first project was the Urban Orchard project in 2015, which was in collaboration with the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation and planted seven citrus trees in Storke Plaza. The fruit from all of the trees is donated to the A.S. Food Bank in order to give back to the student community. This project helped lay the groundwork for more ambitious projects ECP would later take on such as the Hydroponic Vertical Gardens. 

This academic year, ECP is focusing on teaching gardening in unconventional spaces, such as apartments or urban areas, according to Maynard.

“Our real goal is to show that gardening can be affordable and accessible. No matter what sort of space you have, it is possible to connect with the nature around you,” Maynard said.

One of ECP’s initiatives is the hydroponics project, established in 2017, where a water-based nutrient solution is used in place of soil to grow a variety of plants. It can be a solution to growing plants in areas that do not have direct access to soil, such as apartments or urban settings which often are cement-covered. 

The Hydroponic Vertical Gardens are located between the Multi-Activity Court gym and the soccer fields at the Recreation Center. Instead of soil, the plants get their nutrients from a mixture of “compost tea” made from worms, which is supplied by A.S. Department of Public Worms (ASDPW). 

“We couldn’t plant directly in the dirt because of the nature of what the space was, but we could go up … hydroponics can be good when you have a cement area and it creates an opportunity to grow in those types of spaces,” Maynard said.

ECP also teaches classes on how to do at-home hydroponics with mason jars, a “simple and affordable” alternative for those who live in apartments, Maynard said.

Another goal of ECP this year is to engage more with community based organizations on campus by hosting workshops that focus on teaching gardening to marginalized groups. UCSB Korean American Student Association, for example, will be hosting a green onion pancake-making class with ECP, using the green onions which have been recently harvested from the gardens. 

“We’re definitely going to be more in contact with different organizations like that on campus, in efforts to be more inclusive of different groups in the community while still staying within our field of gardening,” said Garden Education intern and second-year pre-biology major David Macias.  

Macias has been a part of workshops with groups like Madre-a-Madre, an organization based in San Jose California that supports Latinx mothers. According to Macias, ECP hosts a collaborative workshop with the group every month as a way to help single Latinx mothers and their children feel a greater sense of community. 

The workshops include a variety of activities usually focused on engaging mothers and their children in gardening. A recent workshop included painting flower pots together and also planting different herbs such as chamomile.

“I got involved in this program because I was seeing the high levels of food insecurity in the community as well as the fact that lots of folks in Isla Vista don’t know their neighbors,” Maynard said. “I think projects like this help us to say this is what we want Isla Vista to be about and how our community can be beautiful.” 

ECP has also collaborated on projects focused on targeting food insecurity at UCSB and in I.V. They helped establish the student farm at West Campus in 2019, which is now primarily run and maintained by ASDPW. The majority of the farm’s harvests go to the A.S. Food Bank.

ECP collaborates with UCSB Basic Needs and Sustainability to host events and help maintain three gardens on campus and three off-campus. These gardens are located at the Campus Greenhouse, St. Michaels Church, Isla Vista Community Center and University United Methodist Church. These include plot-based gardens, with designated areas of land where people can grow their own produce and community gardens which are more volunteer based. 

The plots on campus at the Green House and Garden Project require an initial $40 fee to cover the year and then an additional $10 refundable deposit, providing community members with access to tools and fertilizer. The Saint Michaels garden has plots which are available for an initial $15 fee and then a $5 monthly fee. 

“We grow a lot of foods that are important to different cultures, that oftentimes are hard to find in the local area. Also when volunteers are taking in our harvest they are getting fresh food straight out of the garden, and that is priceless, especially for food insecure students,” Maynard said. 

The other type of garden is community-based, and maintained by volunteers for more community engagement and flexibility in terms of participation according to Maynard. Volunteers can harvest from the gardens for themselves after providing volunteer work. The gardens focus on rotating crops seasonally throughout the year, which promotes sustainability and allows members to harvest all the time rather than having one large harvest.

According to Maynard, ECP is currently in discussions with Pescadero Lofts, which provides housing for formerly homeless individuals in Goleta, about collaborating on gardening workshops as well as other affordable housing locations in the community.

“Sometimes there are misconceptions around gardening or how to approach it, maybe they are too scared or feel they are going to mess up. We are here to tell people it is ok to mess up, but we will also help you along the way,” said Macias. 

A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the Nov. 14, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.