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When it’s freezing cold outside, it helps to “think spring.” That’s what College of Education, Health and Human Services Fall 2024 grad Sasha Kindred is doing. More specifically, she’s planning how the ������-Dearborn Community Garden — with its zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, sweet peppers, cabbage and more — can have another successful year.

“I know it seems early, but we are working to plan what’s needed for our community garden,” says Kindred, a Planet Blue Ambassador and an intern for ������-Dearborn’s Sustainability Programs. “This gardening project is a newer initiative on campus that gets people thinking about sustainability in a different way, and of what we can do to help ourselves and the people in our campus community. During these times of uncertainty, there are many sustainable skills that we can adopt to help ensure that basic needs are met.”

The student-led garden, which is located in the Environmental Interpretive Center’s Community Organic Garden, aims to build community, while addressing food insecurity among students. This Planet Blue Ambassador initiative started in 2024.

Last fall, the garden helped stock the ������-Dearborn Student Food Pantry with fresh produce. The garden team, led by Kindred, is looking for interested students, faculty and staff to help do that again.

Interested in getting involved? Sign up to volunteer, suggest what to grow and ask for more information . All skill levels are welcome.

The  that 23% of undergraduate students in the U.S. — 3.8 million — experienced food insecurity in 2020, more than twice the rate of food insecurity among the U.S. population that year. And that number keeps growing.

Dearborn Support Community Support Coordinator and Case Manager Tatiana Rodriguez, who manages the ������-Dearborn Student Food Pantry, sees this trend at the university. In the 2022-23 academic year, the student food pantry distributed about 8,000 pounds of food. During the 2023-24 academic year, the food pantry distributed around 46,000 pounds of food. And from Fall 2022 through Winter 2023, the food pantry served an average of 102 students a month — in January 2025 alone, 451 students visited the panty.

“With the high prices of food, gardening is an important way to be self-reliant and to help others,” says Office of Sustainability Programs Coordinator Grace Maves. “There was also a mutual aid component to it. Our friends at the EIC would let us know when someone renting their own garden plot needed a hand and our volunteers would jump into action.” 

Approximately 45 pounds of fresh produce was donated to the Student Food Pantry through this garden initiative in 2024. The types of fruit and vegetables grown were based on student preferences, which were gathered by an online survey. Kindred says cultural connections are made through the garden too. At the end of the gardening season, students harvested hundreds of marigolds — a natural pesticide for gardens — to make garlands that they donated to student organizations hosting Día de los Muertos celebrations.

Maves says the community garden was made possible by contributions from the Environmental Interpretive Center, a team of 40 active volunteers and dedicated faculty and staff. She says faculty and staff donated time, gardening experience and items. For example, CEHHS Assistant Professor Finn Bell donated sweet pepper, cabbage, leek and cherry tomato seedlings, along with a variety of several seeds.

“We had a core of dedicated volunteers who spent time tilling the soil, planting, weeding and growing friendship,” Maves says. “They put their hands, heads and hearts into this garden.”

Among those was volunteer Aronhot "Aron" Malau, a criminology and criminal justice graduate student.  Malau grew up on a farm in North Sumatera, Indonesia, where he helped his parents grow coffee, rice and vegetables. He was among the first to work on the plot, clearing weeds and prepping the soil.

Malau, an international student, says he saw the garden plot as a way to meet more people on campus, connect with his home and leave a positive mark at the university.

“I was so happy to have this opportunity to get out and do something good, using what I learned on my parents’ farm. My work in the university garden is something I will always remember. When I come back and bring my kids, I will show them the spot where I worked,” says Malau, who graduated in Winter 2024 and now works as a tax officer in Jakarta, Indonesia. Malau and his wife have three young children. One was born in 2024 while he was a ������-Dearborn student. They named their youngest child Clara after Henry Ford’s wife. “We all have different gifts and skills. If one of those can help someone who is less fortunate, isn’t that a beautiful thing?” Malau adds.

������-Dearborn senior Sophia Hawkins not only volunteered in the garden, she was also a part of a food scarcity-focused class that brought the idea of a community garden to Maves and Kindred. While taking Sociology Associate Professor Carmel Price’s “Poverty and Inequality” course in Fall 2023, Hawkins had the idea to start a garden and classmates were interested. But, with students graduating and the challenges of recruiting new volunteers, the project needed a long-term university-based home that went beyond the semester. 

“In class, we talked about ways to support people around us. I wanted to grow food with the goal of donating it to the ������-Dearborn Student Food Pantry. I’ve been to the food pantry and it’s a great resource we are blessed to have, but it doesn’t always have fresh produce items. I thought about what we, as students on tight budgets, could do to change that. We could work to grow our food,” says Hawkins, who’s majoring in criminology and criminal justice. “I’m so glad Sasha and Grace wanted to take the community garden idea on. They’ve done an amazing job with it. Come out and help — it’s fun to get your hands a little dirty.”

Kindred says she looks forward to working in the garden and having the ������-Dearborn community come together to do good for the food pantry, create sustainable skills and to enhance overall campus well-being.

“We are directly contributing to an important cause through our donations, which is motivating. But there are multiple things gained from learning how to garden and working together as a community. You have the opportunity to learn something new, meet people with similar interests, receive mental health benefits from working outside with the land, and grow more confident in your ability to grow your own food,” she says. “This is a cause that has multiple positive effects.”

Questions about the ������-Dearborn Community Garden? Reach out to Maves or Kindred.

Story by Sarah Tuxbury. Photos courtesy of Sustainability Programs.