Culinary Arts Garden
SFCC Innovation Center in partnership with the Controlled Environment Agriculture program and the SFCC Foundation has spent the summer with volunteers from the SFCC Staff and Faculty to form a community garden on campus. Eleven of the sixteen raised-bed garden boxes have been cultivated by participants from nine campus departments. The garden is producing vegetables and flowers – corn, squash, beans, cilantro, basil, dill, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, daisies, snapdragons, nasturtiums, strawberries and more. The efforts of these volunteers have beautifully revitalized a campus facility. The garden is located outside the East Wing Eatery.
If you would like to volunteer and cultivate a “box” or work with one of the participating SFCC departments, contact Ondine Frauenglass, Director of the Innovation Center, ondine.frauenglass@sfcc.edu
May 2024
June and July 2024
August 2024
Garden Revitalization 2021
SFCC Foundation has partnered with several groups to revitalize the Culinary Arts Garden and establish a community garden. Grow Y’Own, which originally installed the raised beds, worked with Love, Tito’s, a charitable organization that aids in the creation and restoration of community gardens nationally.
The BEE Campus Initiative
SFCC has partnered with the Xerces Bee Campus communities across the United States to work to conserve native pollinators by increasing the abundance of native plants, providing nest sites, and reducing the use of pesticides. As such we have committed to make the SFCC campus a better place for native pollinators.
SFCC will also make educational opportunities available for students to learn about native pollinators and the importance of pollinator habitat conservation.
What are the benefits of the Culinary Arts Garden?
- Reduces SFCC’s carbon footprint by eliminating transport of produce
- Provides a demonstration garden and living laboratory for SFCC students
- Offers volunteer opportunities for students, faculty and staff in a hands-on learning environment
- Showcases environmentally friendly gardening techniques
- Establishes a seed library of open-pollinated, organic seeds adapted to our local environment as a community resource
- Grows fresh produce without pesticides, chemicals or genetically modified plants
Future plans for the garden
- Develop a perennial pollinator garden on the south side of the raised beds, facing the Fine Arts Studios
- Create more in-ground gardening spaces utilizing worm compost to enrich soil and add more perennial vegetable production
- Add berries and fruit bush area and perennial herb and flower beds
- Enhance the fruit orchard planted by The Masters Program students, and harvest fruit from the apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, and apricot trees
- Add a sculpture garden, benches and signs crafted by SFCC art students
- Create a central outdoor kitchen classroom for post-harvest vegetable care, herb drying and garden classes, and as a space for all to use the garden as a classroom
Contacts
If you would like to volunteer or have questions about the Culinary Garden, please contact Ondine Frauenglass.
The Culinary Arts Garden was made possible through the generosity of the 2010 general obligation bond passed by the people of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Community College Foundation. The revitalization is made possible through the Santa Fe Community College Foundation, Love Tito’s Block to Block, Grow Y’own and Reunity Resources.