This project is part of a senior independent study for the Environmental Studies major at the University of Rochester. The purpose of this project was to research community gardening in Rochester, NY, past and present, and devise solutions for promoting efficiency and continued prosperity of programs within the city.
This website is in itself part of the proposed solution, as creating a single space for community members to go to for access to all pertinent information is greatly important.
Another solution is the “Find a Garden Near You” app, located under the “Get Involved” tab on the header menu, and on the website homepage. This web app consists of a map including many of Rochester’s community gardens. You can put your address into the locator bar of the far left widget, and results will pop up with the gardens nearest to your location. You can then use a separate widget within the app to review and print the directions.
Working on this project has been a great learning experience, and has shown me the importance of stepping outside of my comfort zone and into the community. Engaging with the world around us is crucial not only for personal growth, but for the growth of those around us as well. You could help someone in a fantastically unique way and never know it until you put yourself out there, and vice versa. We all have so much to give and have so many unknown common goals — collaboration and cooperation is the solution to our problems, known and unknown.
In the future, I’d love to see more University of Rochester students step out of the campus bubble sooner and more surely than those before them. There are infinite ways the knowledge we are learning could help those around us, while also giving us new spaces for creative exploration. Perhaps more hands-on classes, paralleled by partnerships with local organizations, could be implemented down the road.
written by teddi shapiro, class of 2019