Ringling College of Art and Design
PAE-19: Community Sustainability Partnerships

Ringling College of Art and Design has partnerships with Orange Blossom Community Garden and Friends of Sarasota County Parks.

Ringling College partnered with Orange Blossom Community Garden during New Student Orientation 2012, and for the 2013 Local Alternative Spring Break Project.

New Student Orientation 2012

During NSO 2012, approximately 65 students and one staff member spent the day at the Orange Blossom Community Garden. Participants planted seeds for their fall garden, worked on getting the youth garden ready for the fall, cleaned and prepared garden plots for neighborhood non-profit organizations, moved and organized supplies and materials, laid cardboard and spread mulch between beds for walkways, planted peach trees, and assisted with other general gardening tasks.

Other sites for service projects during New Student Orientation included partnerships with the Friends of the Sarasota County Parks: Alligator Creek and Caspersen Beach. Participants removed invasive plants, such as grape vine, love vine, and Brazilian pepper, removed debris, and contributed to the health of the scrub jay habitat. There were 400 student participants in these projects.

2013 Local Alternative Spring Break

Every year Ringling College of Art and Design provides a community service project over Spring Break that gives students the opportunity to spend their break making a difference. This year, Ringling College partnered up with the Orange Blossom Community Garden, a local community garden led by Master Gardener Gail Harvey, that provides affordable land plots to Sarasota residents and educational opportunities for kids from pre-school to high school.

On day 1, our student-volunteers built a shed for the children’s garden and got started on converting a children’s race car bed frame into a raised garden bed.

On day 2, under the guidance of Mr. Perkins, a local constructor and regular volunteer at Orange Blossom, Ringling student-volunteers worked hard on installing foundation posts for the shelter of the garden’s new wood chipper. Volunteers also tended to the peach trees that Ringling students planted in August of this year during the Orientation Service Project. Gail Harvey, Master Gardener of the Orange Blossom Community Garden, taught volunteers about many different plant species, and even some had their first taste of fresh-picked arugula.

During day 3, volunteers put up the sides on the shelter of the wood chipper—a shelter made completely of recycled materials, primarily wooden pallets from construction sites. It reflects the ideologies of the garden well, where nothing goes to waste. Resourcefulness, hard work and passion keep this garden thriving.

The volunteers also had the chance to learn how to harvest and cut collard greens, which replenish themselves quickly when properly tended. Volunteers spent their last day at Orange Blossom Community Garden tending to plant beds and planting to new apricot trees with Gail Harvey.