Every springtime week, the Carolina Garden Co-op meets to eat dishes incorporating the vegetables and herbs they grow themselves on campus, such as carrots, lettuce, beets, potatoes, cilantro and arugula.
The whole community – from UNC students to local elementary school students – is invited to a “Garden Grow Down” from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. today in their garden on Battle Lane behind Kenan Residence Hall.
“I think a lot of people on campus don’t even know that there is a garden on campus that they can become involved with,” co-op member Bryce Koukopoulos said. “The event is to bring people together to learn about the garden and celebrate what it is doing.”
Co-op member Jordan Treakle said the event will be a combination of “a block party, a fiesta and a county fair,” complete with three-legged racing, face painting, a cakewalk, as well as getting down both on the dance floor and gardening in the dirt.
There also will be information about at-home composting and other ways to get involved with environmental advocacy.
Campus groups, such as FLO Foods and Alianza, an immigrant farm worker advocacy group, will have representatives at the event.
Community representatives from the Carrboro Farmers’ Market and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority also will attend.
The co-op was founded in 2002, when former UNC student Erin Fornoff got permission from a local landowner to convert a small piece of privately owned land outside Kenan into a garden.
Now a campus group, the co-op plants and harvests its own vegetables, greens and herbs and shares the food among themselves.
