After two years of incubation, the Grow Beach! community garden will hold an unofficial opening at 1 p.m. Friday on the developing land on Atherton Street and Earl Warren Drive.
“This is the first semester we’re actually breaking ground and building the garden itself,” said Natalie Baugh, the publicity officer for Grow Beach! and a senior dietetics major.
During the soft opening, the land will be blessed by members of the Tongva tribe.
California State University, Long Beach is built upon land that was previously settled by the Tongva, and Baugh said the team feels that it is important to involve members of the tribe in the project.
“The land at CSULB is very valuable, not what you can build upon it, but what you can grow upon it,” Vincent Holguin, the visionary for the community garden, said.
Holguin was the Fall 2013 Associated Student Inc. vice presidential candidate, a sixth year engineering student and a member of the Tongva tribe.
He said he acknowledged the disagreement between the tribe and the university that happened in 1992, when plans for a strip mall replaced an undisputed idea for an organic garden on the sacred area called Puvungna, the 22 acres of reserved land by Beach Drive and Bellflower where the Tongva hold yearly ceremonies.
In the wake of the clashes between the tribe and campus officials, former President Robert C. Maxson declared that the sacred land would be preserved, and it has remained untouched since.
Holguin said he wanted to do a project that would strengthen the bonds that had been weakened by the conflict decades ago. While he and the team originally wanted to place the garden on Puvungna, the campus set them up with a two-year trial lease in the area behind the Housing office.
“I saw the garden [as an opportunity] to bring everyone to the table and support something beneficial to all students and uniquely enough, to the land itself,” Holguin said.
The Grow Beach! team has roots in ASI, the College of Health and Human Services, the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Students for Sustainable Health and the Grow Beach Project Committee, supervised by Dr. Libby Gustin, Assistant Professor of Hospitality Management.
Holguin’s brainchild has fostered support from students interested in learning about sustainable living through getting their hands dirty in order to have food.
“It’s kind of cool,” Baugh said. “We have a really wide range of members this semester, from every college except for the College of Education.”
Come spring, the 87 5×5 foot plots of the land will be available for students and faculty to rent and cultivate. Applications are currently available on Org Sync.
The application says that each garden box costs $25 per semester for students and $50 per semester for faculty and staff. Students get first pick, but Baugh said the team is still discussing whether to open the garden up to community members.
Baugh said throughout the spring semester the team will offer gardening workshops for members of Grow Beach! to help them get a handle on their gardening skills. Each member will be required to attend an orientation before starting to cultivate, and four garden managers will oversee the plots and be available for guidance, Baugh said.
“There are certain requirements for the types of vegetables [that can be planted in the garden],” Baugh said, “[but] it’s a big range.”
According to the application, the purpose of the individual gardens is to grow edible produce and beneficial flowers. The envisioned garden is called a “Kitchen Vegetable Garden,” in which plants are specifically grown for consumption purposes. Although the garden has not yet completed the long process of becoming certified organic, Baugh said the garden would be organic based.
Richard Haller, ASI executive director, said via email that construction is going along as planned.
“At this point in time, there is no construction involved other than installing irrigation and hose bibs to supply water to the garden,” Haller said.
In order to be grow-ready by next semester, Haller said garden boxes must be installed and filled with soil, and a storage shed, hoses and garden tools are needed. For some supplies, Grow Beach! has applied for two grants to help fund the project and the team will be soliciting local businesses.
Haller said that while ASI and Grow Beach! have received a bunch of inquiries, they have only received two applications; the application deadline has been pushed to Dec. 1, the Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
“We believe interested students will use that time off to complete their applications,” Haller said.