March 5, 2012
Garden parties
Baptiste Coudrillier, a Mechanical Engineering graduate student, and Sam Olafson, a junior majoring in molecular and cell biology, fill a raised bed with soil. Photo: Will Kirk/Homewoodphoto.jhu.edu
A student-created community garden on the Johns Hopkins at Eastern campus will soon bear fruit, literally. Students, staff and community volunteers recently constructed 10 raised beds and marked out areas for six communal rows and a future strawberry patch. Volunteers also built a tool shed on the 4,000-square-foot site, which will offer space for more than 30 four-by-eight-foot plots.
The garden, called The Blue Jay’s Perch at Johns Hopkins Eastern, was the idea of a student-run group committed to bringing local and sustainable food to the Homewood campus and the surrounding Baltimore area. Students, staff and faculty will be able to sign up to garden in the communal rows or to work with a neighborhood community group in the raised-bed plots, beginning this spring.
A kickoff event for the garden will take place on April 28.