University of Montana Dining Services Garden

 The UDS Garden and associated closed-loop campus food system serve as a living learning laboratory where students, faculty, staff, and guests can learn about food production through various gardening methods, passive solar greenhouse design and management, innovative waste reduction, composting, and water catchment. The garden provides an alternative learning environment where people connect with each other, the land, and agriculture, through the shared work of growing food for the campus community.

Every piece of this project was carefully thought out and designed to minimize harm to the environment. The wood for construction projects is reclaimed from previous construction or sourced from forest restoration sites within 200 miles of Missoula. Topsoil for the garden was relocated from a farm in Frenchtown (15 miles away), and compost is made from food waste from the dining halls at our student-run campus farm, the PEAS Farm (PEAS stands for Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society).

The garden itself has three sections: 1) an array of 12 raised beds, 2) a large area used for row crops, fruit trees, and the passive solar greenhouse (directly to the south of the raised bed zone), and 3) a permaculture-inspired food forest that utilizes edible Montana and Northwest native plants, including serviceberry, currants, alpine and wood’s strawberry, the native red raspberry, and hazelnuts. The Food Forest is planned to mimic nature, where plants can grow a little wilder, but still be for human consumption. Together, the three sections represent various methods of gardening and total over 100 varieties of plants.

A high diversity of organic and heirloom seeds are started at both the PEAS Farm and on our custom-designed seed starting racks inside our residential dining hall, The Food Zoo. Students have the opportunity to watch them grow as they begin their journey to the garden. Then, as spring approaches, the seedlings are transplanted outside accompanied by seeds sown directly into the garden. This is done using creative methods like intercropping (planting different sized plants together to maximize plants per unit area), companion planting (placing plants next to each other that facilitate better growth, or as insect repellants etc.), and relay cropping (having multiple harvests from one location as the season progresses).

Throughout the season, produce from the garden is used in UDS venues. Luckily, our dining hall, the Food Zoo, is only steps away from the garden and the farthest any of the produce travels is across campus for catered events. We create special menus and name cards to feature the garden produce so our guests know that their food was grown just for them. We’ve also preserved bumper crops by putting up our produce by blanching it then vacuum packing and freezing it for use over the winter.

Another interesting initiative of the UDS Garden is our Wintergreens project, where we’re growing food throughout the winter to showcase season extension and indoor growing techniques. In addition to our passive solar greenhouse, we constructed cold frames and a hot bed through hands-on workshops with students. This infrastructure enables us to grow food in cold temperatures by creating modified environments that increase the air and soil temperatures around the plants. During winter, the seed starting racks double as space to grow microgreens. Microgreens are young, tender leafy greens high in nutrients that can be grown indoor throughout the winter.

To complete the food production process and close the loop, we compost our garden waste and save seeds from our hardiest crops for the following season. This waste is then used the following year to add renewed fertility to the garden. As mentioned earlier, we chose organic and heirloom seeds so that we can save seeds for next year. This allows us to save money on seed input costs as well as selects seeds from the most vigorous plants for a healthier crop next year, slowly making our plants stronger through the process of natural selection.

The manpower for garden upkeep and maintenance comes from our Garden Manager, who oversees production and outreach, our Student Gardener, who is responsible to the daily maintenance and some composting, our Farm to College Coordinator, who manages administrative functions, and a great team of dedicated volunteers.

Overall, this initiative is unique in that it incorporates all aspect of the food production cycle within a plot of land no bigger than many people’s back yards. It also demonstrates the uniqueness of location in an urban setting, and provides a model for food production in dense, urban environments. This makes it an excellent educational tool that demonstrates the actual processes of how individuals and communities can bring their food systems close to home and move towards community food security.

It is also an educational tool in a more direct way, offering a variety of academic opportunities for students and faculty to get involved. For instance, we have projects for soil science students to analyze the soils to help us understand what we are lacking and how to amend our soil for healthier plants, projects for botany students to help save seed and understand how we can select hardier crops to maximize our harvests, and it shows us all how we can utilize locally grown, seasonal foods on our menus to become more sustainable, fresh, and healthy in our dining operations.

Campus gardens are a wonderful way for food service departments to engage their campus communities through collaboration with academic departments and student groups. Together, here at UM, we are creating a beautiful, sustainable, and delicious new outdoor classroom for everyone to enjoy.