Come & Learn!

1. The Outdoor Classroom through the Seasons Save these endangered species by growing & eating them! Here We Are! Anderson Merion Outdoor Classroom & Garden Bean, Royalty Purple Pod Tomato, Isis Candy Cucumber, Boothby’s Blonde Pepper, FishLettuce, Red Salad Bowl Sykes While contemporary parents spent their free time as kids exploring and playing in nature, their children devote only four to seven minutes a day to unstructured outdoor play like climbing trees, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk, taking a nature walk or playing a game of catch. Yet, kids spend more than seven hours each day in front of electronic media. Demonstration, Not Production The WCU Garden is too small to produce significant amounts of food for the campus. Rather, it demonstrates basic organic gardening techniques, including container gardening , composting and rain barrels and hopes to inspire staff, faculty, students and guests to dig in and grow their own! Sustainability @ WCU:The Outdoor Classroom & Garden at Merion HallTim Lutz, Geology & Astronomy Heather Sowers, Graduate Social Work Mission Statement While bringing natural beauty to a high-traffic area of campus, the Outdoor Classroom and Garden inspire West Chester University staff, students, faculty and visitors to take simple actions to meet their own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same. The Outdoor Classroom shows how native plants can transform any backyard into a wildlife habitat that sustains biodiversity.  Providing organically grown produce three seasons of the year, the garden serves as a living reminder of where our food comes from, helping people make more educated decisions about what they eat. Why Biodiversity is Important Have you ever wondered why you can go to the store and find 19 brands of toliet paper, dozens of cleaning products and 28 shampoo scents but usually only 2-3 kinds of lettuce? In the 1950s as the ability to transport goods increased, the verities of produce began to decrease. Commercial growers grew hybrids that would look the same, travel well and keep long. As noted in Environmental Nutrition, “The repeated reproduction of these traits lead to modern monoculture farming (growing only one crop variety over a large area), which limits biodiversity and has led to soil-mineral depletion that can affect the nutrient quality of crops.” In a study published in the December 2004 issue of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition researchers studied 43 crops from 1950-1999 and found significant declines in six nutrients, including protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and ascorbic acid during that period. Because of single crop production practices, many pure cultivars or heirlooms have died out, depleting biodiversity in our food sources. Growing your own open pollinated, heirloom vegetables (or buying them from a local farmer’s market) is a great way to preserve biodiversity. Heirloom vegetables grow true to type from seed If you plant seeds from a typical non-organic cucumber, it wouldn’t grow because hybrids can’t reproduce. Seeds Savers Exchange, a pioneer in the heirloom preservation movement reports that more than 80% of the apple varieties in North America have been lost since the 1900s. The dodo isn’t the only thing that’s gone extinct! Due to efforts seed savers around the world, our genetic heritage is being preserved. SSE members offer 256 varities of lettuce, 176 kinds of cucumbers, 1,573 varities of beans, 887 kinds of sweet and hot peppers and a staggering 4,713 kinds of tomatoes! The WCU Garden supports local seed company Happy Cat Farm and the regional Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Growing your own opens up an amazing bounty of flavors, colors and textures for our tables. Come by the garden this summer and taste the difference! • Transform Your Lawn! • In addition to serving as a field laboratory, the Outdoor Classroom is a living example of how anyone can transform their lawn into an outdoor habitat. • Benefits of An Outdoor Habitat: • *No More Mowing • *No fertilizers or pesticides needed • *No annual planting needed • *Provides wildlife habitat • Low Maintenance • Natural Beauty • Attract more Birds & Butterflies Special Guest Teachers In the Outdoor Classroom Organic vegetable gardens have been present on the WCU Campus in various forms for over eight years. Professors Joan Welch and Paul Morgan and their Honors 314 class: Science, Technology & Environmental Systems: Sustainability Through the Lens of Agriculture & The Professions helped build and plant the Merion Hall garden in the Spring of 2010 (photos above.) This year’s class expanded the area (photos below), adding more raised beds, a wildflower garden and a perennial vegetable bed. This class brings together students from a wide array of majors: pre-med, music, education and business (to name a few). • Come & Learn! • Classes across the disciplines can use the Outdoor Classroom & Garden for observation, research and inspiration • Science classes can observe birds, butterflies, insects and some small mammals • Art or Writing classes can come to the area for inspiration and contemplation • Staff in a department can join our Help & Harvest program and participate in the Garden • Student groups, dorm floors and Greek Life can also join Help & Harvest • Everyone can enjoy the natural beauty of this quiet corner of campus! Education for Sustainability Come visit us and see rare Martian Turnips, landing in a garden near you this season! Actually, this is Kohlrabi, Purple Vienna variety. It’s a great crispy addition to salads with a mild yet unique flavor. WCU’s undergraduate and graduate certificate programs in Education for Sustainability bring participants from colleges, universities and K-12 schools throughout our region to campus. The Outdoor Classroom and Garden provides a setting for experiential learning and also serves as a hands-on model of projects EFS practitioners can create in their own settings. EFS classes include: Environmental and Sustainability Education: History, Theory & Practice, Outdoor and Place-based Education and Systems in Sustainability Education. To give time for reflection in silence means understanding silence as a part of teaching and learning. It means giving time to stop and listen, and to listening one need to be quiet. A quiet moment gives space to think and reflect on what was said and what was seen. We may be listening, but what do we hear? It is in the silent reflection that our thoughts take shape and makes the experience into learning. Alerby, E., & Elidottir A 2011 study shows that in an average week, college students reported spending: 14.35 hours texting 6.49 hours on the phone 33.84 hours of face-to-face social time 5.43 hours on social networking sites 1.58 hours on Email 1.69 hours on computer games 6.59 hours listening to music on an ipod 4.36 hours on sports or physical activities Help & Harvest! Help & Harvest! is our new program to involve the entire campus in our demonstration garden. Student, faculty or staff groups sign up to weed and water on a certain day of the week. Every group that helps maintain the garden also gets to harvest produce! More experienced gardeners serve as Helping Hands to teach others what to weed and what to eat! Sustainability Intern Heather Sowers, above, plants peppers and tomatoes in the 4th floor Merion greenhouse with young helpers from the Children’s Center. The kids helped water and plant last year and are excited to learn more about gardening! Heirloom Vegetables: Historically and Nutritiously Precious. (2010). Environmental Nutrition, 33(6), 7. Hanson, T. L., Drumheller, K., Mallard, J., McKee, C., & Schlegel, P. (2011). Cell Phones, Text Messaging, and Facebook: Competing Time Demands of Today's College Students. College Teaching, 59(1), 23-30. doi:10.1080/87567555.2010.489078 Whole Child: Developing Mind, Body and Spirit through Outdoor Play. National Wildlife Federation Report. http://www.nwf.org/Get-Outside/Be-Out-There/Why-Be-Out-There/Benefits.aspx Alerby, E., & Elidottir, J. (2003). The Sounds of Silence: some remarks on the value of silence in the process of reflection in relation to teaching and learning. Reflective Practice, 4(1), 41.