Green Criminology
CRIM 3911 – Mark Vardy
Food Justice Gardening Project
Summary:
The project has students work with garden boxes on the Surrey campus, connect their experience with socio-ecological concerns, and also write a blog post.
Description
Students work in groups of three to five to grow vegetables in the Westerman community garden boxes on Surrey campus. At the start of the term, about 25 students identified as having no gardening experience, with about 10 saying they had partial experience. Halfway through the term, seeds and starts were planted, and the project was thriving. Partnership with other KPU organizations, notably the Kwantlen Students Association (KSA), the Department of Sustainable Agriculture, and the KPU Library is vital to the project’s success.
The KSA provides materials such as tools, soil, access to water, and the garden boxes themselves. The Department of Sustainable Agriculture hosted CRIM 3911 students at the Richmond Farm for a field trip during class time (travel there and back on transit was also scheduled during class time). At the KPU Farm, CRIM 3911 students toured the farm and participated in a seed workshop led by faculty, and they worked alongside Sustainable Agriculture students weeding in the fields. The Farm also provided starts for students to plant in their garden boxes. The KPU Library created a collection of hand tools, such as trowels, hand rakes, that the students can check out to work on their gardens. The library also hosts a seed library that students have used. And in addition, KPU Librarian and avid gardener Melissa Cuthill has led several workshops for students on how to garden and coached them along the way.
Students are expected to share the produce they grow with others, and connect their experience to issues of food justice, including social-ecological harms related to the production, distribution and consumption of food in our society. They are also expected to blog about what they learn here Garden Reflections for CRIM 3911: Green Criminology.