Community Spotlight: Purdue Fort Wayne and Educational Urban Gardens

Highlights from the School of Education Urban Garden: A Campus Partnership to Build Awareness of Local Foods, School Gardens, and Cultivate Community Engagement

By Julia Smith, School of Education at Purdue Fort Wayne 

In the spring of 2019, The School of Education at Purdue Fort Wayne (PFW) partnered with Purdue Extension- Allen County to launch the School of Education Urban Garden. The joint efforts of this project provided a space on campus in which students in the School of Education could engage with other students, faculty, and Master Gardeners, and young children to learn about school gardens, farm to school, local foods, and healthy eating. This garden created a hands-on learning environment for adults, students, and children of all ages on the PFW campus.

Last summer and into the fall, with the abundance of vegetables that had grown from the garden, we partnered with the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at PFW to host a farm to fork dinner on campus. Attended by over 50 people, the event celebrated all of the teamwork and hard work put into the garden, which brought together people from different backgrounds, interests, ages, and all walks of life.

With the onset of Covid-19, we have been able to continue the garden project in 2020. This has led to a new partnership with Out of a Jam, a local Fort Wayne non-profit that provides food service training to high school students. Out of Jam will be harvesting tomatoes and vegetables from the garden to preserve for the purpose of creating a community ‘to go’ dinner event in fall 2020.