American University
ER-T2-2: Organic Garden

The garden is a space for all AU students, staff, and faculty to take advantage of where their food comes from and gain skills to grow for themselves. The garden is about 700 square feet, has 30 beds in addition to about 12 raspberry and blueberry bushes. We also grow a variety of vegetables including tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash, cucumbers, carrots, beets, okra, as well as herbs such as basil, thyme, and mint. The food we produce goes to members of the garden club (membership is open, and if you contribute you can share the harvest). The university dining hall also uses the herbs in their cooking.

Furthermore, we are reducing food waste while providing the garden with nutrients by expanding our compost capacity. We compost about 1-3 pounds of coffee grounds a week from the Davenport Lounge on campus in addition to food scraps and garden plant waste. We have shown our support for the Real Foods Real Jobs campaign that promotes social and ecological sustainability on our campus through participating in the Food Day event on October 24th, 2012 by hosting a Tea Party. This event brought together AU food workers and students and provided tea and snacks made with materials from the garden.

The garden has collaborated with the Davenport Lounge, a student-run coffee shop on campus, to sell organic tea from the garden and with the AU Beekeeping Society to make chocolate mint lip balm using mint from the garden and beeswax from the campus apiary.

The description of the garden was provided by the Fall 2012 garden coordinator. The official website for the garden is http://auecosense.squarespace.com, however, the Facebook page is much more active.