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Spending Time in the Augsburg Community Garden

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Picture of Sophia in the garden, in front of many plants, palms spread open and holding a small melon.Author: Sophia, Augsburg Student and Garden Intern

My name is Sophia and I am officially in my last year at Augsburg! When I first started my internship in the community garden, I thought I was basically signing up for a chance to get my hands dirty and learn a few things about growing vegetables. What I didn’t expect was how much it would change the way I looked at food, people, and even myself. At first, tasks like weeding, watering, or picking up trash felt repetitive. But over time, those simple tasks became strangely grounding. There is something incredibly calming about focusing on the rhythm of nature, watching plants grow day by day and noticing details I would have ignored before, like the different shapes and colors of different leaves and how to identify them.

Working in the garden, I got to meet neighbors who came to tend to their personal plots, families who relied on the garden’s harvest, and other students wanting to learn. These interactions slowly taught me what community really means, sharing knowledge, food, and connection. I remember helping an older gardener one afternoon as she explained how the seeds she brought came from her home country, and listening to her stories made me realize how much history and identity can be held in something as small as a seed.

The garden is a constant reminder that growth takes time, care, and effort, and sometimes setbacks are just part of the process. Watching plants bounce back after a storm reminded me that resilience is built slowly, and often in the most ordinary moments. Those little challenges taught me patience and persistence, especially when plants were harvested without permission or if the bunnies got to them.

Coming to the end of my internship, I realized that what I have gained went far beyond the skills of gardening. The garden gave me a deeper respect for the work it takes to bring food to the table, a stronger appreciation for the people who make up my community, and a sense of responsibility to live in a more sustainable, mindful way. Most of all, it taught me how interconnected we all are, that the health of the soil, the strength of our neighborhoods, and even our own well-being are tied together. I now have a feeling that I was part of something bigger, something rooted in care and growth.

More Than a Garden: Growing Community at Augsburg

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Two Auggies digging in the dirt, managing the communal garden plots on a sunny day

Author: Greta Klawiter-Lein, Community Garden Coordinator

Tucked just behind the Hagfors Center, the Augsburg Community Garden is one of the most vibrant spaces on campus. Although it’s hard to miss the big garden there, you might not know what the intention is behind that space. It’s not just a garden, but a gathering place where community, learning, and food all come together.

The garden is made up of 64 individual plots, most of which are tended by neighbors from the surrounding Cedar-Riverside community. A few Augsburg alumni, faculty, and staff garden here too, but the majority of our growers are local residents who bring incredible knowledge, skill, and dedication to their personal plots. Augsburg provides this community of gardeners with many resources such as land, soil, seeds, plants, water and a hired gardener coordinator that manages communication, resources and facilitates events among other things. By lowering the barrier to access and having sustainable, healthy food practices right here in the city, this space is helping folks who do not have land to grow food and offering them an outdoor space to call their own.

About half of the plots are in-ground and the other above-ground plots are for supporting disabled persons and elderly gardeners. The gardeners here love this space; not just for the dark leafy greens and tomatoes they can grow, but also as a welcoming nature-space that they often end their evenings at. While you will see many zucchinis in this garden, you’ll also see vegetables you won’t always find at the grocery store, crops that are culturally significant and important to their families and food traditions such as anchote or epazote.

Walk through the garden on a summer day and you might hear five or more languages being spoken. English isn’t even the most common! You’ll hear Somali, Oromo, Amharic, Arabic, Spanish and others. On any given day you might catch some children playing hide and seek behind the tall corn, friends praying together, families collecting tomatillos for a shared meal, and friends connecting across rows of kale, tomatoes, and okra.

While each gardener manages their own plot, the space is open and welcoming. Apples and raspberries grow along the edges of the garden, and anyone walking by is welcome to harvest and enjoy them. All events that happen in the garden are also open to the public. If you ever meet a gardener, you will most certainly be gifted something from their plot; a prized fruit of labor and love.

But the garden isn’t just about food. It’s about beautifying our neighborhood, making space for experiential education, and creating opportunities for people to learn and grow together. From students curious about sustainability to families who’ve gardened for generations, everyone brings something valuable to this space.

Whether you’re a prospective student, a neighbor, or just someone who loves green spaces, the Augsburg Community Garden is a reminder of how much we can grow together.

Environmental Stewardship Team Celebrates & Reflects

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Today past and current Environmental Stewardship team (ESC) members gathered in the Community Garden to celebrate this year’s accomplishments, reminisce about fun times we’ve had together, eat local food, and reflect on what the work and team has meant to each of us.

 

In a tradition started this year, graduates from 2022 and 2023 ESC teams planted Arikara Yellows Beans. This planting acts as a symbol of the gifts each of our graduates, Alexa, Alyssa, Elan, Gigi, Grace, Mercy, and Zoe, have given to the work of advancing environmental sustainability at Augsburg and in our neighborhood. Although most may not see the results of the work they have started and propelled along, their legacies will be felt in small and profound ways by future Auggies, ESC members, and neighbors. These seeds, as their past work, will be stewarded by current and new ESC members. The dry beans will be cared for this summer, harvested in the fall, dried, and used to feed the community. Some seeds will be saved for the 2024 ESC graduates to plant anew. The cycle will continue and with each planting the soil will continue to be nourished as will the work of environmental sustainability be advanced. This is how changes happens – with joy, community, and the sharing of gifts.

 

Thank you Alexa Carrera, Alyssa Parkhurst, Annabella Castillo, Elan Quezada Hoffman, Elijah Abdullah, Gigi Huerta Herrera, Grace Muchahary, Malachi Owens, Mercy Zou Taithul, Summer Bordon, Wren Doyle, Yousra Tinsley, and Zoe Barany. Your collective leadership, equity-mindedness, authentic teamwork, wisdom, and organizing power has moved environmental sustainability work forward in profound and meaningful ways. The garden is continuing to be more connected to campus and advancing food sovereignty for its gardeners. The ShareShop has become a welcoming resource for many Auggies, a way to rethink waste diversion, and a catalyst for mutual aid on campus. Although renewable energy is still on the horizon, the steps to get there have become clearer and excitement is building. Thank you to each of you for your leadership, stewardship, and collective action.

 

Cultivating Community: Augsburg’s Community Garden

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Ten people in diverse garb sit on the edges of raised garden beds or at tables. Some are eating food, others are looking ahead with attentive gazes.
Gardeners gather for a meal and storytelling event in the garden.

Gazing out the west-facing upper windows of the Hagfors Center on Augsburg’s campus, you can’t miss benches, paths, and raised beds of Augsburg’s community garden. While the garden on the edge of campus has been cultivated since 2008, when the plans for the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion got underway, there was a distinct opportunity to preserve and re-imagine this unique community garden space. With support from the Medtronic Community Foundation, design guidance from O2 Design, and community-based input, the garden was rebuilt to make the space more accessible, inclusive, and visible. 

Throughout the design process for the new garden space, gardeners and Augsburg staff centered the enduring principles and goals for this vital community connection space: grow food, build relationships, and learn together. Two young people converse while sitting on the edge of a raised bed in the garden.The garden now has wider and defined pathways, clear plot boundaries, and a variety of raised and in-ground beds. 

The re-designed garden just finished its second season of production. With over sixty individual plots and communal growing space cultivated by residents of Cedar-Riverside and Augsburg staff, faculty, and students, the newly rebuilt garden is continuing to offer a place for learning and building community. 

About half of the members of Augsburg’s community garden are neighbors in Cedar-Riverside and Seward (six have a view of the garden from their homes across the street!), and about half are Augsburg staff, faculty, and students. Student groups, such as Hmong Women Together and the Augsburg Indigenous Student Association, tend portions of the communal gardening areas, and about ten students from TRIO Summer Bridge spent time learning in the garden over the 2019 growing season.

Individual gardeners are not the only people to utilize the garden; this fall, several professors teaching classes focused on food and sustainability are also capitalizing on the presence of the garden. From a history of food class, to a course on environmental connections to food, a chemistry AugSem, and a science of food and cooking class: the garden has increasingly become a laboratory for classroom learning on wide-ranging subjects related to growing and consuming food. Other classes utilize the garden in less formal ways, perhaps holding a class outside by The Loveliest of Trees, or sending students out for discussion as they walk the garden paths.

Natalie Jacobson and Allyson Green enjoy conversation in the garden. Another individual is in the foreground wearing a red backpack, their back turned to the camera.
Campus Kitchen Coordinator Natalie Jacobson (left) and Chief Sustainability Officer Allyson Green (right) enjoy conversation at a garden event.

During the summer and fall of 2019, the garden began to utilize the Food Lab space in the Hagfors Center for potlucks and food preparation. Chief Sustainability Officer Allyson Green, who oversees the garden, remarked that the first session of gardeners gathering in the food lab over the summer was the highlight of the season; people got to know one another and shared cooking techniques and conversation as they made sambusas. This season also saw a student-led storytelling event in partnership with Mixed Blood Theater and food activist, LaDonna Redmond. As gardeners and others are living into the new space, opportunities for connecting and learning with and from each other are growing alongside the vegetables. 

One challenge with the garden rebuild was impacted soil in the in-ground beds due to construction equipment. After the garden was initially built, gardeners were having a difficult time cultivating healthy root systems for their plants, requiring that all of the in-ground beds be dug up and the soil turned. Thankfully, dozens of students, several classes, and a few athletic teams answered the call, picking up shovels and making quick work of the beds that required turning.

When asked about how the garden fits into the overall sustainability commitments of Augsburg, Allyson noted that the garden is a visible demonstration of Augsburg’s commitment to caring for the place where Augsburg is located. By tending to our natural environment and building a place for community building, food access, and learning, the garden is an important aspect of Augsburg’s place-based and anchor institution work. 

An aerial view of the Augsburg Community Garden. A table in the foreground has food on it, and people are lining up to serve themselves.Allyson also noted her hopes for the garden. With twenty-five people on the waiting list, she hopes that the garden can continue to be a vital place on-campus for learning and relationship building that contributes to the well-being of the whole community. She dreams that the garden might be a model for cooperation and learning that can spread to other areas of campus, and even to other communities! 

As a space that requires the cooperation of dozens of people who all have different ideas about ways of growing food, habits of organization and storage, and different cultures, personalities, and life stories, the garden is a unique place for experimentation, building community amongst difference, and finding a middle ground. Here’s to a successful growing season and many more to come!