Sustainability blooming on Loyola Campus
The term “Loyola Farm” has been used by Concordia’s sustainability pioneers and student politicians, but what does it really mean?
Efforts to plant food on the Loyola campus are taking root. While no large-scale farm has been built, several small sustainability projects have allowed the concept to thrive.
“I was hired to co-ordinate all of the various projects that are going on at Concordia right now,” says Penny Kaill-Vinish, newly hired as the university’s urban agriculture co-ordinator. “A lot of them come from different people and different groups. The goal was to create a position with a coherent view of all these projects.”
After only a few weeks on the job, Kaill-Vinish says many projects are underway and will evolve over time.
“The Loyola Farm doesn’t really exist at this point, but it is a long-term wish,” said Kaill-Vinish. With nearly an acre available on the northern end of campus, the dream could become reality.
A tour of Loyola’s current sustainability efforts starts at the northern end of campus, around Loyola’s solar house, a 2005 project by Concordia’s Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering to create a solar-powered home.
Planted around the house is the RealiTEA garden and a brand new vegetable garden planted by participants in Concordia’s downtown greenhouse-based City Farm School. In all, nearly a half-dozen green plots surround the solar house, with mushrooms growing in the shade.
Nearby is a garden, started in 2006, that grows herbs and produce to support the People’s Potato, a vegan soup kitchen that serves 400 meals daily to Concordia students on a pay-as-you-can basis. Next on the tour is Loyola’s industrial-sized composter, installed in 2008.
Walking south, students will soon be able to check out the renovated Hive Café, a sustainable coffee shop in the Campus Centre operated by the Concordia Student Union. The café is slated to open in late September.
The newest addition to the green campus is a series of interconnected gardens on the oversized steps of the Communication Studies and Journalism Building. Growing out of a plan to install rooftop gardens on several Loyola buildings, the stepped garden is managed by Action Communiterre, a neighbourhood-based community gardening collective.
Kaill-Vinish is already planting the seeds for more projects. Over the next few weeks she will supervise the addition of 16 trees and bushes at Loyola, which will bear plums, cherries, apples, pears and berries.
“It’s a multi-year dream to transform Loyola into an edible landscape,” said Kaill-Vinish. “It’ll be yummy. You’ll be able to wait for the shuttle bus and snack on currant bushes.”
• For a tour of some of the Loyola Farm Project, watch the video:
Related links:
• “Solar House Goes to Washington” - Thursday Report, September 15, 2005
• The People’s Potato
• Composting at the Loyola Campus