Salt Lake Community College has renamed its campus community gardens.
Now, the gardens will be named the “Student Gardens” to give students more ownership and promote sustainability. By shifting the focus from “community” to “student,” the college aims to emphasize that the spaces are designed for students to cultivate their own food, connect with others and acquire sustainable skills, one plot at a time.
Anita Lui, the Thayne Center’s assistant director for community engagement, has been working alongside community gardens coordinator Emily Hansen to change the program’s name, so that students who engage with the gardens know the plots are there for them.
“Students rent their first plot for free, and then if they want a second plot, they can go onto a waiting list,” Lui said.
Lui and Hansen are trying to maximize students’ use of the plots without imposing limits on what can be grown in them, as long as it’s legal.
Hansen has also been putting together a webpage tool, which will be found on the existing community gardens webpage, for recommendations on what to grow depending on the season, along with some educational tools for gardeners.
Lui and Hansen plan to start gardening workshops this academic year. During the fall, they plan to hold a workshop on winterizing the plots to get them ready for next year.
“You don’t need to be an expert, but we want you to feel confident to know how to start to seed, how to transform into the ground, how to care for them during the year, and how to clean out the soil so that it’ll be ready for next year to go home,” Lui said.
Lui hopes that students will see the benefit of learning to garden and know that anything they grow on the plots, including food, they can take home and use for themselves.
Volunteers who want to help with the plots will be on an “as needed” basis, depending on what tasks are needed.
“Here at the Redwood Gardens, there have been volunteers helping water because we just had some irrigation issues, and so we’ve had to do a lot more hand watering this year, which is fine,” Lui said.
Business student Luiza Felippe, who works at the Thayne Center, believes that the name change for the gardens will encourage students to be more interested in learning about the resource.
“I think it’s a good strategy to change the name, and maybe more students will get involved because that’s the whole point, right?” Felippe said.
Kinesiology student Matthew Schoonover, who works at the Student Writing and Reading Center, believes there is a significant benefit for students learning about more sustainable ways to grow their own food at a lower cost.
“If I knew how, I would maybe do like onions, tomatoes, peppers, a few fruits, just different basic things that I would use every day,” Schoonover said.
Bruin Pantry manager Lauren Hunt said that the gardens and the Bruin Pantry collaborate to provide students with access to fresh food.
“Lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, squash,” Hunt said.
The community gardens website highlights that the plots are rented for the entire growing season, which goes from May through October.
Orientation dates for 2026 will be April 7 at the Taylorsville Redwood campus, April 8 at the South City campus, and April 9 at the Jordan campus.
