Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 68.36
Liaison Marianella Franklin
Submission Date Jan. 10, 2023

STARS v2.2

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
IN-7: Community Garden

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Marianella Franklin
Director of Sustainability
The Office For Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

A brief description of the institution’s community garden:

The garden facility finished construction for its first phase early in 2014 and is located at the North East wing near the UTRGV Child Development Center. There has been 7,500 ft2 of land fully equipped with irrigation, access to the tool shed, and a shade-house dedicated for research under the Agroecology program. Adjacent to this is the UTRGV's state-of-the-art greenhouse equipped with a water wall, sprinklers, and fans ensuring optimum temperature

Research and teaching portions began with the Agroecology Lab and Dr. Racelis' Agroecology class, back in Fall '14. The garden was lush with okra, eggplant, peppers, basil, tomatoes, cucumber, beets, radishes, lettuce, kale, marigolds, zinnia, and cover crops growing.

There has been 2,500 ft2 set aside for a community garden, which is decorated with 15 raised beds. 9 student organizations including the Environmental Awareness Club, The Garden Club, SGA, and many more have signed up to grow, maintain, and harvest their yields.

https://www.utrgv.edu/agroecology/facilities/utrgv-garden-and-greenhouse/index.htm

UTRGV C.R.A.W.F.I.S.H Garden- The project for Climate Resilient Agroecological Watershed-Food Integration System for Husbandry (C.R.A.W.F.I.S.H) is an effort to help eliminate hunger across the entire Rio Grande Valley. Established by Dr. Christopher Gabler of the School of Earth, Environmental and Marine Sciences (SEEMS), the garden was created in the Brownsville campus and is made up of 12 garden plots, supported by PVC pipes and each contain an agricultural bed, containing fruits and vegetables, a suitable wetland, and a pond for aquaculture species, such as crawfish.

https://rgvstormwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GABLER-.pdf

Hub of Prosperity/Farmer’s Market-The UTRGV agroecology program and Edinburg First United Methodist Church have made a collaborative effort to provide fresh product through farming efforts dubbed as the Hub of Prosperity. Through the Hub of Prosperity, student farmers are able to provide fresh produce through organic practices, meaning no chemicals are added to the vegetables they grow. This space also allows the student-led organization to have a weekly farmer’s market for the entire community, in which patrons can either go in-person to pick and choose their produce or purchase it online for pickup.

https://www.facebook.com/hub.of.prosperity/
https://openfoodnetwork.net/hub-of-prosperity/shop#/about


Website URL where information about the community garden is available:
Estimated number of individuals that use the institution’s community garden annually:
---

Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.