Sun staff
The University of Cincinnati Clermont College’s Community Garden will continue to grow and develop after receiving a grant from Duke Energy.
The grant is for $9,000 and is from the Duke Energy Foundation, said Warren Walker, district manager for community and government relations.
The garden was started in 2010 as an Earth Day event with $100, and donated 400 pounds of food that year, said Krista Clark, a biology professor and one of the faculty members responsible for the garden.
Five years later, the garden has donated nearly 4,000 pounds of food, Clark said. The produce goes to many different food banks in the county, including Inter Parish Ministry, the YWCA and James Sauls Homeless Shelter.
This is not the first grant the garden has received from Duke, Clark said. Duke gave a grant for $4,000 in the garden’s second year to pay for tools, like gloves and shovels, and an electric fence.
The Community Garden aligns with Duke’s values, Walker said.
The garden is environmentally friendly, it provides learning opportunities for college students and the food from the garden is donated.
“It’s more than just giving out money or just getting a grant, what we’re doing is we’re trying to make a difference in the community that we serve,” Walker said.
One of the struggles the faculty members and students working the garden have had is water access. Two years ago a drought was so bad that Clark estimates the garden lost half of the produce it could have had, she said.
The grant will provide enough money for the garden to tap into city water, Clark said, which will reduce manpower needed for the garden and give students more time to run experiments.
The garden also needs a parking lot, Clark said. Currently, anyone who drives to the garden parks in Craig Lytle Auctions’s lot, but by putting in a gravel driveway, it will be easier for a class to come to the garden and it will be wheelchair accessible.
“The driveway will be great because it will be easy access but it will be the water that makes everything so much easier,” Clark said.
Because the garden will be wheelchair accessible, Clark is hoping that people involved with the senior center next door can come visit the garden and help out. Clark and the other faculty members are hoping to eventually expand the garden so community groups can come in.
The final improvement that Clark plans to use the grant money for is to switch the garden from one large plot that students and faculty till every year to something like permaculture, where the garden would not be tilled.
Also, rather than one large plot, the garden would be switched to designated beds with straw in between for walking paths, Clark said. The beds would make the garden easier to run and permaculture is supposed to limit weed invasion, she said.
The garden will also have a greenhouse soon because of leftover money from another grant, Clark said.
She also plans to use money from that grant to buy covers for raised beds so the garden can produce more crops throughout the year.
Construction to access city water cannot begin until the spring, and the driveway cannot be put in until after the water project is done, Clark said. The garden bed setup will be changed on Earth Day.