Garden Hosts Showcase

By Mallory Miller

The Forge Garden is having its first official showcase this Friday, exhibiting student-built aquaponic garden, implanting beehives, growing biodiverse arrays of plants in the greenhouse and student research beds.

 Student volunteers are setting up multiple stations throughout The Forge to give briefings to Santa Clara faculty and staff about the transformations the half-acre organic garden has gone through this past year.

"A lot of inspiration for the different aspects of the garden have come from students and what they want to see happen at the Forge," said Olivia Benson, student intern at the Office of Sustainability. 

One of these projects, the recently finished aquaponic garden, started out as a business project idea.

Sophomore business major Noah Belkhous needed a space to build the aquaponic garden, so he talked to Garden Manager Rose Madden. Madden had already blocked off a section of the Forge specifically for student business projects and was able to give Belkhous the green light to start building in the allotted space.

Belkhous worked with Forge volunteer environmental science major, Ian McCluskey, to complete the project in a few short weeks.

"The idea behind the aquaponic garden is to make a model of a system that could potentially be the base of sustainable commercial agriculture production," said Belkhous. 

Aquaponic gardens do not require soil, so they provide a way to grow plants without stripping nutrients and resources from the earth's soil. The garden has a fish ecosystem that produces the nutrients needed for plant growth. It electronically runs water from the fish ecosystem through the plants to provide the plants with nutrients they need to grow; this process also filters out the water for the fish. "Essentially we are manipulating the ecosystems around us," said Belkhous.

Madden welcomes student ideas and contributions to the Forge.

The three beehives that were just added to the Forge this past week started as student ideas as well. The idea was to bring hives to the Forge to help pollinate the garden and to provide students with a way to study the bee population. 

These are only a few of the Forge Garden aspects that will be highlighted at the showcase. Faculty will get a chance to have a look at all parts of the garden.

"We hope everyone will come out and enjoy the wine, spring sunshine and learn more about how the garden can benefit them," said Madden. "There are many ways (Santa Clara) staff and faculty can use the garden both personally and professionally."

Even though this showcase is for faculty, keep an eye out for a showcase for students in June.

Contact Mallory Miller at memiller@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.