By Richard Mast

mastr@findlay.edu

Tucked behind the Egner Center for the Performing Arts on the corner of Frazer Street and the Corey Street Mall, is a small garden taking shape, surrounded by brick walls covered in ivy.

The area once housed huge satellite dishes. Over the last year, students have worked to turn it into a sustainability garden.

Justin Richardson, instructor of teaching in environmental, safety and occupational health management, says the space will highlight environmental responsibility and bring classroom learning to campus life.

“Right now, we’re looking at ways that we can make this usable for students for reflection, so they can sit at a picnic table, charge their phones and listen to a waterfall,” Richardson said. “We could actually use it for environmental work and looking at soil quality and seeing how plants survive.”

Richardson’s class, ESOH140 Sustainability: An Introduction, is working on the project this semester but started the project in the same course last fall. The planning has been a little tricky.

“We identify native, non-native, and invasive species on campus, and we come to the realization that our diversity on, for example, bringing in raised beds to grow plants is great, but the specifics to that region, that small spot on campus, it’s very dry,” Richardson said. “So what we found over the last two years is that some of the species that we’ve tried to plant, thinking of a traditional Ohio weather, is not fitting so well.”

“The biggest struggle I feel like has been trying to figure out how to get water in this area because this is a big drought area, there’s not a lot of areas we can get water in here,” junior environmental, health, safety, and sustainability major Carson Kuhlman said. “Getting plants to grow and stuff has been a big issue.”

Richardson says the project is all about building something long lasting. Students are incorporating features like native plants, study areas, and even some interactive elements.

This space is being transformed into something current and future Oilers can use and enjoy while giving the students a tangible way to put plan to action. Junior business administration-finance major Gavyn Smith is another student in the course working on the project.

“We’ve been coming here since the very start of the semester,” Smith said. “We came out here and looked at everything and then we been planning, making blueprints, and just deciding what we want to do to make it a better place for the students.”

Richardson is also in collaboration with the Mazza Museum to put some sort of artwork in the space.

“We’re all kind of siloed off from time to time and we don’t recognize how things connect,” Richardson said. “And being able to connect the arts and environmental classes, I think, is a great way to bring more people in and see how everybody can benefit.”

Kuhlman believes that the garden has the potential to draw more attention to the area and help students feel more connected to campus.

“We have a couple things planned for this area that will definitely help maybe bring people to campus, make them more interested in this area and maybe more around campus,” Kuhlman said.