The garden, located on Madison Street in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was founded in 2017 by four students and two staff members, who have dedicated themselves to fulfilling their mission statement: “to create and foster the growth of a nurturing community, geared toward selfless service and sustainable living.”
Figure 1. A freshman class reflecting on their day of service at the Community Garden, sitting among the beds, compost, and water collection system.
Expanding Partnerships
In two years, the campus group has expanded from four students and two staff members to over 20 students and six staff members. In addition, partnerships have been created with engineering classes, the engineering club, the Hispanic Outreach Program, the Juvenile Mentoring Program, the campus volunteering center, Campus Ministry, Crestwood High School, Coughlin High School, the Hildebrant Learning Center, Ruth’s Place, and The Wilkes-Barre Department of Health. Jessica Britten, a founder and our Winter Semester Intern, she has been able to develop a partnership with the King’s College Community Garden that will allow for the students to also try out this new innovation in the Spring.
EPCAMR is joining and supporting them in their efforts to unite the community and promote sustainable lifestyles by donating boxes from the Growboxx project, which will be placed in one of ten of the garden’s plots to be utilized for their second harvest.
EPCAMR Involvement
Staff members Denise, Laura, Robert, and Shawnese have been working with The Growboxx project from Groasis, an extremely innovative Dutch company, by sharing the initiative with elementary schools in the community. The project promotes sustainability in every aspect by upholding the company’s goal of, “‘low cost, less water, faster growth”’. EPCAMR is fortunate to be a part of bringing their innovative sustainability tactics to high poverty area school districts throughout the Wyoming Valley, Luzerne County, PA.
The Community Garden could not be more thrilled to learn from EPCAMR and share the international initiative with King’s College and the surrounding community. Each Growboxx increases the survival rate of plant species by 90% while also using 90% less water. Following EPCAMR’s suggestion, the garden will be growing native raspberry plants along with herbs in these “intelligent buckets”.
Figure 2. A Growboxx that will be used in the garden in support of their second harvest.
Growing Community
Bringing this project to the garden will build bridges between different populations in the city and surrounding municipalities, now stretching as far as the Netherlands. Creating relationships and continuity between people is a goal of the garden’s and creating collective change in the community through environmental initiatives has been a goal of EPCAMR’s. This mutualistic partnership is guaranteed to make a lasting impact on our combined communities.
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