Leafy Vegetables Are Now Growing on the Roof of NJIT's Campus Center
A green space is growing on the roof of the Campus Center at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
It’s a community garden with five plots, each tended by students, staffers or professors with ample light and water. The output will be vegetables and herbs, with a portion donated to NJIT’s food pantry. The project has a broader purpose as well.
“We want to have a space where it’s easy to meet people from other departments, schools and disciplines — without hierarchies,” said Ester Flaim, a key organizer and the assistant director of graduate studies at NJIT. “More than anything, I feel that this is a project to build community.”
A refuge
Coupled with that goal is a chance for Highlanders to slow down, get their hands dirty and do something creative that takes time. Indeed, the ingenuity, persistence and patience of gardening offers relief from the relentless demands of a hyper fast world.
“There are seasons. You cannot force rhythms,” Flaim explained. “A garden is a refuge, but also a place of resistance to the daily grind. Look, observe, see how it changes. I hope it’s going to be a living thing that incorporates those values.”
Flaim partnered with Assistant Director of Sustainability Prabhakar Shrestha to identify the site and incorporate the food pantry. Flaim also gathered practical advice — such as from Newark plant expert Melissa Leuthner — and secured a Love Your Block, Newark! grant from the city to cover the raw materials needed to start a garden, including wood for raised beds, soil, seeds, compost and tools. Indeed, this project also deepens NJIT’s connection to its home city.
Initial planting started later than expected, so organizers turned mostly to leafy vegetables like radicchio, kale, parsley, carrots and broccoli rabe that can be harvested in the fall. That said, they also included cucumbers, tomatoes and tulsi basil, if only to see what happens, particularly if fall runs warm. In the spring, the gardeners will plant in April and May, so they can harvest in the summer.
Takes a village
Because gardening extends beyond the academic year, the garden relies on year-round graduate students, staff members and some Albert Dorman Honors Scholars to step up in the summer. They use a Google Sheet to track their watering. One rule: if you water one plot, water them all.
Each plot is assigned to a group, though other participants are welcome, particularly as organizers hope to add plots. The initial groups are the Graduate Student Association, NJIT Green, Nepali Student Association, Sanskar and a cluster of faculty, staff and administrators.
The grant required that at least six gardeners live in Newark. No sweat there, as staffers Ana Caneira, Melanie Dunn, Zachary Kellett, Brandon Robinson, Erica Rolek and Alexis Telyczka, Ph.D. student Fernando Vera Buschmann and Associate Professor Cong Wang all live in the city.
Same goes for Flaim, who walks to campus from the Ironbound section. A quest for green space sparked her pursuit of a garden. In a few months, we’ll see the first fruits.