The University of Denver Bridge Community Garden has a new home on campus, on the corner of Race Street and Iliff Avenue. The goal for the new garden is to become an experiential learning where faculty, staff and students can come to engage with one another and with DU neighbors.
“DU is in the Denver community, but sometimes we’re isolated,” says senior Chelsea Warren, co-president of the DU Environmental Team. “This community garden is a great way to not only collaborate among ourselves, but to meet our neighbors.”
In addition to 38 plots for DU community members and neighbors, the garden serves as a bee host site through the Urban Pollination Project. The Garden Network Committee (through the University’s Center for Sustainability) worked closely with Risk Management, the Health and Counseling Center and Housing and Residential Education — and followed protocols established by Denver Urban Gardens — to ensure the bees safely enhance the DU campus. A local independent beekeeper, Seneca Kristjonsdottir, will care for the bees and will employ interns and host workshops for the community to learn about beekeeping.
The garden and its bees also provide a natural space for collaboration. “We really want the garden to be a place where different groups from around campus come together,” says junior Jess O’Toole, president of the undergraduate club Students for Sustainable Food.
This collaboration is already in the works. Students from the Emergent Digital Practices program plan to put sensors in the beehive to collect data for the biology department and to utilize in creating art. The garden will be available on 25Live for class and event reservation.
“Getting people into the gardens is a gateway to sustainability; we can then get them involved in the conversation,” Warren says. “Having these bees on campus will be great for increasing natural pollination as well as helping to combat the larger global issue of Colony Collapse Disorder” — the phenomenon of disappearing honeybee colonies in North America.
To learn more about the University of Denver Bridge Community Garden, follow its official page on Facebook.
-Adapted by Katie Watt from a Clarion article by Connor Davis