Although walking around campus this summer has been a battle, with all of the new fences and blocked roads due to construction, something new has sprouted up amid the dust — an on-campus garden.
Since the beginning of time, a là the biblical Garden of Eden, gardens have held a special place in human civilization. In literature, poetry and the arts, gardens have symbolized everything from rebirth, healing, care and nourishment to death, decomposition and the cycle of life.
Gardens have also had a special place in my heart. My earliest memories are olfactory: memories awash in scents of citrusy grass, sniffing the zest in the air, playing with delicate tendrils of tomato vines in my childhood backyard and tracing their cylindrical metal wire frames with my fingers.
Growing up with an omnipresent California drought, I watered ever-thirsty strawberries with the leftover water from vegetable rinsing, taught by my mother to always reuse and recycle. For my 18th birthday, my friends and I woke up at 9 a.m. on a Saturday to spend the morning weeding out invasive species in our local park to support the health of the native plants.
Though I did not grow up an avid gardener, I have always been drawn to the tenderness of moist brown soil and precious little sprouts, working their magic and harnessing the sun. Up they grow, against all odds.
However, the tumultuous transition into college meant that I’d been separated from gardens. I had to find my way back to the roots and rediscover their magic.
Luckily, this summer, gardens have come full circle in my life. In my architecture class, taught by studio art and engineering science lecturer Jack Wilson, our main project has been designing and constructing vertical gardens out of old wooden pallets. I was curious as to why he chose to focus our project on structures for plants rather than humans. So I asked him. “It was inspired by the feelings I have around the buildings we study, and their relationship with the natural world,” he told me.
“We build buildings, in some ways, to protect ourselves against the natural world,” Wilson continued. “Yet the natural world is baked into us, built into our DNA because that’s how our ancestors lived — so connection with plants really strikes a primal response within us. … Seeing things sprout and grow is really beautiful. It really reconnects you with the natural world in a way you don’t find otherwise."
Potting, watering and caring for the baby basil, kale, butter lettuce, nasturtium, marigold and cucumber plants in the garden we made, I understood what he meant. I felt tender, nourishing something sprouting and growing beyond myself.
Ramina Askarova ’26, another student in the class, said she felt a similar connection to nature.
“Getting my hands in the soil and picking plants of my choice to build something of my own helped me reconnect with my inner child,” she said.
Soon, I found my class experiences permeating my existence on campus. Beyond class, wherever I looked, I discovered signs of human-nourished plant life. I noticed, for example, planter gardens full of flowers and herbs with handwritten placards inviting students to “Pick me!” around the Cube.
Pioneered by Daysia Charles ’25, School house program coordinator Erin McMahon and Allen House coordinator Rosalyn Goveia, the “Little Green” is an on-campus community garden surrounding the Cube.
Before coming to Dartmouth, Charles was first introduced to gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic. At home in Massachusetts, she delivered container gardens and seedlings to Boston residents as part of the ‘Neighborhood Grow Plan’ initiative — which encouraged residents’ interaction with nature and personal food accessibility.
According to Charles, encouraging her neighbors to garden also brought them joy, relieved stress and created community connections.
“At a time when it felt like everyone was closed off from each other, people were excited to talk about how they like to maintain their container gardens, what produce they enjoy growing and how these foods are significant to the dishes that they cook in their respective cultures,” she said.
After bringing her experience to Dartmouth, Charles said she has found it therapeutic to have her hands in soil by creating the Little Green. She explained that she wanted to foster a similar energy at Dartmouth for people to connect with one another through working with their hands or trying new foods — the fruits of their labor.
To the Little Green team, gardening presented an incredible opportunity for a plethora of connections: the natural world, wellness, food accessibility and community building on campus.
According to Charles, the Little Green also provides more convenient access to produce than the Dartmouth Organic Farm. Though the O Farm is an amazing resource, it is off campus and more difficult to access for some students, especially during a busy Dartmouth term. The Little Green, however, is located centrally on campus — allowing it to become a hub of wellness and plant-fueled joy on campus.
Beyond the community building aspect, the Little Green’s creators also envision that Dartmouth’s on-campus garden could grow into a food forest for everyone on campus, according to McMahon.
"We’re creating healthy food for people to eat, because we’re all in this culture of fast, fast, fast,” she said. “The food that’s really better for us is this type of food. … If we can get students excited about growing their own food, or at least eating fresh, healthy food, that’s a really good thing.”
Discovering spaces of plant-filled delight in different nooks and crannies around campus, I love to sit for a moment, open up all five senses and revel in the spaces’ beauty.
Whether visiting the School Street meditation garden, sniffing wildflowers planted around campus by the Pollinator Project, seeing gardens along Webster Avenue, eating lunch outside by the flowering planters between the Class of 1953 Commons and the Collis Center for Student Life or building a vertical garden for class, places to connect with plants are everywhere — if you only look to find them.
Bridging humanity and the natural world, gardens hold an abundance of meaning, helping us reconnect with our senses and grounding us in the harmony of nature. There is truly nothing like feeling the soil between your fingers and watching seedlings grow. Next time you take a stroll around campus, maybe it really is time to stop and smell the roses.
Correction Appended (Aug. 5, 8:48 p.m.): A previous version of this article stated that studio art and engineering science lecturer Jack Wilson provided a statement via email. Wilson was interviewed live. The article has been corrected.
