UMass Students Transform Campus Lawn into Permaculture Food Garden

By Good News Network Friday, April 22, 2011

Earth - Science

Planting begins this month for a group of students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who are pioneering a sustainable solution for campuses across the country.

The UMass Permaculture Committee is transforming a 12,000 square foot conventional grass lawn into a sustainable permaculture garden for supplying fresh food to its campus community.

In September the all-volunteer team moved 250,000 pounds of organic matter, intentionally using lawn carts to avoid any fossil fuel consumption, laying the foundations of a huge fertile garden to be planted that month.

Permaculture is a sustainable design system based on ecological principles that will restore ecosystem health and result in an abundance of natural food and habitat.

The UMass Permaculture Garden will supply over 1,000 pounds of vegetables, herbs, fruit and berries to the school's dining commons annually, beginning this spring.

The garden is just one part of a campus-wide sustainability initiative to raise awareness and model replicable solutions for other groups, individuals, and higher education institutions.

Find out how the process of sheet mulching can be easily replicated for any piece of land, by watching the UMass video below...

To see more photos and track their progress, visit UMass Permaculture Blog.