Growing Together: Cultivating Our Community Through a Hügel
Last spring, the Middle School Garden Club envisioned a sustainable food production system to provide food for Riverdale Lunches. Pursuing their vision, they contacted an external landscaping company that quoted them one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to construct a tiered garden. In response, Ms. Costanzo, faculty advisor to the sustainability garden club and art teacher, took the initiative into her own hands. With the support of the Middle School Garden Club and other interested volunteers, she recently began the construction of a self-sustaining hugel.
The hugel, located below Rose Field, is a 5-foot mound of layered organic materials. Ms. Costanzo describes the hugel as “a raised bed. It mimics what would happen if a tree fell in the woods and no one disturbed it.” Ms. Costanzo and Mr. Benson, inspired by a similar project they participated in at another school, brought the initiative to Riverdale and implanted the idea of permaculture within our community.
Ms. Constanzo and Mr. Benson consider the hugel a collaborative project that ties together Riverdale’s sustainability and food service programs. Spreading zeal was no challenge, as their passion for the project was contagious. Ms. Constanzo remarks, “Folks saw our excitement and volunteered on the first day of the build.” There was no shortage of willing volunteers to help. However, the hugel project aims to extend further than the participation of community members and “to formally integrate this project and its messaging into the curriculum,” explains Ms. Costanzo. “Some teachers have come to us saying, ‘This sounds great for my science 7 class next year. Can we be involved?’”
The growth of the hugel is a metaphor for the desire to foster connection in the community.
Just as the hugel thrives off of the earth around it, Ms. Costanzo and Mr. Benson aim to grow a grander knowledge of our earth through people in our community who already deeply care for our nature. “There is a more cultural way in which we build community and connections about this project,” they note.
One way the hugel aims to locally mitigate the effects of climate change in our community is the absorption of the excess stormwater runoff from Rose Field. Climate change has increased the amount of water and caused flooding on our campus during storms. The landscaping team has created a slope in Rose Field to direct the water away from our campus. However, to use the excess water, the hugel is strategically placed below the fields to absorb and utilize it to self-irrigate its plants. Mr. Benson explains, “The log of the hugel acts as a sponge.”
The hugel also aims to sustainably grow organic produce that can be utilized to source food in the salad bar. Mr. Benson and Ms. Constanzo know that the hugel will never be able to provide enough food to contribute to a school-wide lunch, but it will serve as an “edible garden” where students can interact with how the food they consume is grown. The hugel is not a one-dimensional initiative that aims just to produce food but rather extends to affect the mindset of Riverdale students.
One crucial framework of the hugel initiative is to educate students about where the food they eat comes from. A closer connection between the act of consuming and understanding the story behind the food will result in a heightened gratitude for the food served at Riverdale. While eating, Mr. Benson wants the students to enjoy the food rather than simply go through the mindless motions of consuming it. Spending time with and appreciating the food students scoop onto their plates will also reduce the amount of food waste students produce daily. If students carry a fonder understanding of where food comes from and how it is grown, they will be more mindful of the amount they are taking from the salad bar. There is hope inherent in the hugel initiative, which seeks to create a more conscious community regarding consumption.
Overall, the hugel will beautify the school’s community aesthetically and in terms of the mindsets of the students and teachers. The hugel’s mission is to create people who care about more than just themselves and think about the greater good. Just as the hugel creates its self-sustaining ecosystem, it will also create an ecosystem of people working together to improve the school’s campus nature. Riverdale tenth-grader and sustainability club member Orly Elghanayan participated in the building of the hugel and remarked, “I hope that my efforts do not just have a one-time impact, but rather a long-lasting influence that will affect the culture and experience of future students and our campus in upcoming years.” Riverdale’s campus makes the school so unique and special to its students; thus, the ability to improve upon its beauty deepens the meaning of the hugel project. The hugel initiative creates more than a fruitful garden; it produces deeper care for the upkeep and beautification of the campus and the greater world.
