James Wilkins (left), sustainability coordinator at Furman U., tells Scott Carlson about some of the cover crops and heirloom vegetables now growing in the university’s quarter-acre garden. (Photo by Frank Powell)
Greenville, S.C. — The Southern Living home at Furman University was certainly impressive, but the avid gardener in me was drawn to the quarter-acre garden on the east side of the house. There, James Wilkins, Furman’s sustainability coordinator, and Frank Powell, a professor of health and exercise science who is a leading sustainability advocate at the university, walked through the garden and talked about what they hope to accomplish with the soil, some heirloom seeds, and a handful of student workers.
While the Southern Living home is a high-profile model of how to build green, it’s not complete without the more humble garden next to it, Mr. Wilkins suggested. “Everyone has to live somewhere and everyone has to eat every day, so if you want to be holistic about sustainability, you have got to talk about food and how we treat the land,” he said.
The purpose of the garden is to give Furman students and the Furman community a chance to learn about food production and sustainable agriculture practices,” he added. “It’s a teaching tool, but also a chance for students to get their hands in the dirt. There is no better connection to the earth than to be working in it.”
“This is one of the greatest examples of environmental literacy that we have,” Mr. Powell said.
The fruits and vegetables of labor here will be sold to students, staff, and faculty members in a market that will get set up beneath arbors that hold up some of the house’s solar panels.
Mr. Wilkins is following tenets of organic gardening. One long held tenet advises growers to feed the soil, not the plant. If you give the soil and the soil critters the food and minerals they need, they will in turn produce a fertile medium in which to grow.
Other tenets include rotating crops to avoid disease and preserve soil nutrients, using green manures, and growing heirloom varieties. We stopped to look at young tomato plants that go by the name Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter. The variety was grown by a guy named Charlie, who paid his mortgage during the Depression by selling the fruits — or so goes the story, as Mr. Wilkins tells it.
The idea from the beginning was to get organic certification for the garden, but that goal may be difficult. There is treated wood on the site, and the garden has a concrete border; Mr. Wilkins has gotten diverging opinions about whether features like those will defy organic rules.
But Mr. Wilkins said the notion of organic certification is being challenged by those who advise him. They insist that organic certification is too expensive and bureaucratic. Local and sustainable might be enough.
“They think that if your customers know you and know your practices, that’s as good as gold,” he said. “We’re open to the public here and students are very interested and so are the faculty, and if they see what we are doing here and trust us, it may not be necessary.” —Scott Carlson
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