The community garden brings healthy alternatives to University students. (Alex McDougall/Emerald)

What started as a vacant plot of land is now home to 24 garden beds, dozens of varieties of produce and around 60 of the UO’s most avid gardeners.

Edible Campus, a year-old initiative formed to bring gardening opportunities to campus, did just that when it got The Grove up and running this fall. The Grove is the University’s very own community garden where students, staff or faculty can rent one of 24 beds for the year and grow any crops they want.

Edible Campus received a grant from the ASUO over-realized fund last spring and signed a three-year lease for The Grove’s plot on 18th Avenue and Moss Street. Though the initiative can only guarantee the garden’s existence for the next four years, Tristan Fields, the graduate fellow who brought The Grove to life, hopes it will be around for much longer. “In the future, we’re hoping that it’s a full garden — and it’s a really successful garden — so that it never goes away,” she said.

The new initiative is housed in the UO Sustainability Center and uses the urban farm as an umbrella program.

While the hope for the future is heightened involvement, the year-old group certainly has no reason to complain after its first year. Fields was able to fill all 24 of her beds with individuals or groups from the campus community. “It’s definitely full,” she said.

Though the initiative directs the majority of its energy toward its 24 beds and 60 gardeners, Edible Campus has plans to make a noticeable impact in the heart of campus. “Instead of empty grass lots … we might have fruit trees — so that the whole campus becomes more of an agrarian ecosystem,” Fields said, highlighting in particular the vacant field in front of Johnson Hall.

With a successful first year nearly in the books, Edible Campus looks to broaden its impact on campus and certainly hopes to see more eager faces and dirty fingers at The Grove in the fall.