Early one Friday morning as autumn settled upon EMU, Students Engaging in Environmental Development and Stewardship (SEEDS) held a garden cleanup behind the Suter Science Center in the Sustainable Food Initiative (SFI) garden. This garden cleanup event doubled as an announcement of the newly merged EMU’s Earthkeepers club and EMU’s SFI club.
Students and volunteers who attended this cleanup started by clearing out old growth weeds from the beds and covering the bare areas. “We’re trying to clear out beds and put wood chips on them to winterize them, so that they stay and they have no erosion,” said graduate Levi Clymer. Some of the plants in the garden are still growing, including herbs, peppers, pineapple sage, basil, and more.
SEEDS are the people who initiate the garden each year and keep operations running. They start growing plants and herbs around this time, depending on when the first frost is. The garden is ongoing throughout the year, though there are no active plants during the winter. There is a hoop house (sheltered green house), that has not been actively used in quite a while, and one possible step SEEDS is thinking about pursuing is reviving the area so that they can have plants grow throughout the winter.
This EMU garden has deep roots that date back to nearly ten years ago, when it was built by a young man connected to the Willow Run Farm. Since its start, the garden has been an anchor point for student sustainability work on campus. Today, the vegetables and herbs grown here help stock SFI’s Free Food Room, supporting students experiencing food insecurity and limited access to food. Over the years, the garden has been managed by SFI, though with the merger, it will be taken care of in collaboration with Earthkeepers. Both groups have played essential roles in promoting sustainability, food justice, and environmental awareness across campus.
Senior Josh Stucky, one of the leaders of SEEDS who initiated the merge says “there’s an oversaturation of clubs at EMU… It’s rare to get a lot of people to go to events, it just made sense to combine SFI and Earthkeepers, both led by people who are passionate about the same things.”
As SEEDS enters its new season under its new name and combined leadership, the group’s mission remains grounded, both for the garden and the community it serves. There are work study positions that students can check out, including for composting and gardening. This may be the chance to participate in sustainable food production efforts first hand, and to help make changes on campus for the better.