By Vic Cox

Tucked behind a windbreak of eucalyptus and pine trees in the field between Los Carneros Road and Harder Stadium, the two acres occupied by UCSB’s Greenhouse and Garden Project are, to a number of instructors and students, a mix of outdoor classroom, antidote to personal stress, and a link to the larger world.

Oliver Chadwick, professor of geography and environmental studies, has used this quiet corner of Storke Campus for the last few years to “talk about soil nutrients and soil-water relationships.” After digging holes in the dry grassland and wetland areas, he demonstrates differences between soil properties to students; he also compares these soil “profiles” with other holes in land fertilized and amended for garden crops.

“Outdoor class areas close to campus are just incredible,” said the soil expert. “Students love them.” Avoiding chartered transport to more distant locations helps with the budget, too, he notes.

The first time David A. Cleveland taught a course at the project in small-scale food production 35 students showed up when he expected 15. “I was astounded (by the response),” said Cleveland, an associate professor of anthropology and environmental science. He discovered the garden in 1995 when he and his family lived in campus housing and cultivated a small plot.

Small-scale food production means primarily leafy vegetables, like lettuce, for a one-quarter class, Cleveland explains. Students also plant tomatoes, beets, radishes, and some herbs, and have the pleasure of eating the fruits of their labors—if the gophers do not get them first.

Some gardeners tried eggplant, beans, squash, and even corn, but unless they could care for the crops on their own time “they didn’t get much,” he said. Nonetheless, Cleveland encouraged his first class to add fruit trees to the small orchard already present; it has become a tradition for each succeeding class.

The teaching area of the fully organic garden is separate from other plots maintained by 50 project members, said Kristen La Bonte, garden director and a library assistant at Davidson Library. Surrounding the greenhouse, which was raised in the early 1980s on the foundations of a former Storke Ranch structure, are the members’ 40 plots, few of which conform to orderly areas.

Each member—including Cleveland’s students—pays a $20 annual fee, plus a refundable $10 deposit, to gain access to the land, water, mulch, manure, the greenhouse, tools, and “all the gardening help you need,” according to the project’s Web site <http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/ghgp>. The greenhouse, which is the primary nursery for the campus’s native plant restoration efforts, and the garden are open to the public only during daylight hours.

“There is a waiting list,” affirms La Bonte, and members are expected to donate time to the common good of the project. She can be reached at ghgpucsb@yahoo.com for more details. But the value of working a truck garden in an increasingly urban area goes well beyond food production.

“For me, getting your hands dirty (in the garden) is connected to issues of how we will feed 8 billion people in the next 20 years in ways that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable,” Cleveland said. Dealing with the practical problems of growing food, he added, “helps you understand the carbon cycle, global warming, and perhaps the West African farmer whose own food supply depends on getting manure on a field.”