GRoW Garden to evolve with planting of mini forest

Big things are blooming in the green space around the Solar Strand and the GRoW Clean Energy Center on the North Campus.

The GRoW Garden celebrated a very successful first planting season that saw a bountiful harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, radishes and more grown in 11 raised garden beds that were installed last fall and tended to by members of the campus community.

The campus garden will evolve even further with the addition of a mini forest that will be planted over the course of three days next month. Faculty, staff and students are invited to lend a hand by volunteering to plant 1,600 native trees and shrubs over 300 square meters at the back of the GRoW Garden from Nov. 11-13.

The trees will be planted close together in a small area to encourage rapid growth, a reforestation technique known as the Miyawaki Method, “which we believe will help the new trees outcompete the existing invasive species, common teasel,” says Daniel Seiders, landscape architectural planner in Campus Planning, who has been working on the project with UB Sustainability.

“Our goal is to create a biodiverse forest that is reflective of the reference community of forests that we have, the kind of forest that would want to live on this land and that becomes, like Letchworth Teaching Forest, another resource to study and to conduct research and make observations and use for pedagogy,” Seiders adds.

Letchworth Teaching Forest, located near the Ellicott Complex on the North Campus, was used as a point of reference for the mini forest. In fact, many of the trees planted next month will be similar to those that can be found in Letchworth, thanks to the assistance of Sandy Geffner, environmental studies program coordinator and director of internships and experiential learning in the Department of Environment and Sustainability, College of Arts and Sciences.

Seiders has also been working this fall with Heather Williams, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and her students on a project to identify, inventory and catalogue invasive species of plants on the North Campus, including buckthorn, which, Seiders says, is “one of the most widespread invasive species on North Campus.”

Phoebe LaManna, the green space student assistant in UB Sustainability, is excited to see how the forest grows and evolves in the years to come. She’s been helping with the planning of next month’s volunteer event, in addition to playing an integral role with the campus garden.

“This is my second year as an environmental studies major and this work has been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done,” LaManna says. “I think the forest project is so cool and the end product is going to be such a great addition to the campus.”

The GRoW Garden was such a success over the summer that UB Sustainability plans to install six additional raised garden beds in the spring.

“The growing season is largely over the summer when there aren’t as many people on campus, so one of the questions we had was whether there would be a critical mass of people around often enough for it to be successful,” says Seiders. “This summer was definitely a proving ground, and it points to the fact that we must have good soil.”

UB Sustainability received several dozen applications to adopt a garden bed when it put out a call last spring. Another one will go out this spring for the six new beds.

“It was great to see such a large response and that there was such a strong desire among the campus community to garden,” says Derek Nichols, associate director for sustainability. “It was a good cross section of student clubs, departmental units and academic units.”

While each group that adopted a garden bed was able to use their harvest however they wanted, many donated the freshly picked vegetables to UB’s Blue Table food pantry for students. UB Sustainability is also maintaining one of the garden beds specifically to grow vegetables for Blue Table.

Over the summer, UB Sustainability team members led workshops on gardening and pollinators for students in a summer program offered through UB’s Liberty Partnerships Program and the Graduate School of Education’s Counseling, School and Educational Psychology program.