Introducing the Salisbury University Environmental Studies Studio Garden for Ecological Awareness

Hummingbird feasting on a butterfly bush.

Plant it, and they will come - hummingbirds, woolly bears, goldfinches, mitre bees and all the rest.  And, yes, the not so happily welcomed interlopers also make their appearance: harlequin and Japanese beetles, potato bugs and aphids.  Even an occasional black widow spider, not to mention many, many "weeds," wire grass and mugwort among them, show up.  The garden, our garden, is a cacophony of species, a noisy interchange biologically of the domestic and the wild, the invited and the reviled, the familiar and the strange.

But most importantly, be wary: this garden is in search of your soul.

Woolly Bear on a Summer Afternoon

Our garden plot was first tilled and planted by environmental studies and philosophy students at Salisbury University, along with their clueless professor, in the spring semester of 2009.  Organic gardener Jay Martin generously offered his expertise and loaned us many of his tools to prepare the garden for its first crops.  Over the last seven years the garden has grown in size and variety as each wave of students has added their particular flourish to the garden.  Environmental Studies alumnus Christopher Martin left a sculpture-a knight of metal with a strawberry head of blown glass.  Another built a box for our compost pile.  An entire group of students, led by John Bodnar, raised funds for our greenhouse that is dedicated to the memory of Ric Maloof. We now have perennial plantings of grape vines and thornless blackberry, raspberries and asparagus, as well as a peach, a pear and a fig tree. Recently the southern end of the garden has been dedicated to more than human hungers and includes Joe-Pye weed (which is an indigenous plant and not a weed), mint, sweet grass, butterfly bush, lemon balm, turtlehead, penstemon, cinnamon fern and phlox.  Two beds in the back area of the garden are now dedicated to towering plantings of Jerusalem artichokes, which are harvested every fall but return persistently every spring.

We are hoping for even more variety in the future.  Feel free to share your ideas!

Goldfinch briefly Pausing to Survey the Domain