It’s growing season at the University of Mississippi. A collaboration between the UM Garden Club and Grove Grocery will expand the UM Campus Garden, located directly behind Residential College South, to grow produce for the Grove Grocery food pantry.

This new initiative is a recipient of the UM Green Fund, which financially supports sustainability projects on campus. Past project recipients of the UM Green Fund include the UM Compost Collective and the implementation of water fountains in several campus buildings.

This collaboration was initially established in an effort to promote student involvement in the university’s garden and provide food for those in need.

“If you talk to the majority of students, they would really have no idea that we have a campus garden,” senior international studies and Chinese double major and Campus Garden Coordinator Sydney Woodard said. “I wanted to find a way to kind of reach out to the Ole Miss community and engage more students while also ideally filling a void.”

Before this new collaboration, Grove Grocery typically purchased fresh produce from Oxford Community Market. However, fresh produce is still sometimes difficult to obtain.

Grove Grocery Student Director Andie Udziela is a senior biochemistry major. Udziela thinks the new partnership between the campus garden and Grove Grocery is a significant step toward increasing nutritional food in the Grove Grocery pantry and the capacity of the campus garden.

“It’s really difficult to get fresh produce to people who struggle with food insecurity because it’s not as shelf-stable as other options,” Udziela said. “So it’s a really unique opportunity that we have right now to make sure that people are not only getting food but also getting stuff that’s going to truly benefit their health.”

The UM Garden Club is also working to establish a stronger relationship with Grove Grocery. UM Garden Club President and senior pharmaceutical sciences major Astra Hahm explained that in addition to the many benefits of having a garden on campus, the space can be used to obtain fresh food for students’ meals.

“The great thing about the campus gardens is that anyone can rent out a garden bed, even if they are not a part of the garden club,” Hahm said. “While growing produce does take time, it is a cost-efficient way to get food. The on-campus garden can be very helpful as it provides students another avenue to get food.”

Food insecurity is still a prevalent problem in the Oxford community. According to a 2023 Feeding America report, which presents data from 2021, the food insecurity rate in Lafayette County is estimated to be around 13.3%. Feeding America defines food insecurity as the lack of access to an adequate amount of food.

The Oxford Community Garden seeks to remedy this issue in a similar way to Woodard’s new garden initiative — by providing space for individuals to garden and food for the local pantry. Duncan Gray, head of the food pantry division at the Oxford Community Garden, explained that individuals cultivating personal plots of land is one of the garden’s sole purposes.

“The idea is that pretty much anybody could come in and work the land,” Gray said. “Most of the plots are done by individuals.”

In this garden, four large plots are set aside just for the Oxford Food Pantry, and this garden has produced results, with about half a ton of fresh vegetables provided directly to the pantry in the past year, according to Gray.

The types of produce provided depend on the season. Currently, cabbage and collards will be harvested in the next five to six weeks. Once the weather gets warmer, vegetables like beans, squash and tomatoes are next to be planted and harvested.

When harvested for the food pantry, the produce is raw, fresh and unprepared. Once in the hands of the Oxford Food Pantry, volunteers and employees wash it and package it to be sent to families in need — a process that Grove Grocery also does when they acquire fresh produce.

Fresh produce is always in demand. According to Oxford Food Pantry Executive Director John Kohne, the pantry feeds around 700 families monthly. While packaged food donations are essential, clients also want fresh and nutritious food, which gardens successfully provide.

“My clients will come in, and actually, their eyes will light up when they see that there’s fresh vegetables,” Kohne said. “The locals, really, they love it, so we try to make sure that’s (vegetables) available too as well as the basics.”

The new collaboration between the campus garden and Grove Grocery is already underway at UM. According to Woodard, plants are bedded and expected to be ready for the campus pantry in the next two and a half months.

Although Woodard’s time at the university is coming to a close, she hopes to inspire others to become involved in the project so that it can continue to flourish.

“I’m a senior, and Andie (Udziela) is also a senior, so we are going to have to say goodbye to this project by the end of the summer,” Woodard said. “And right now, I’m hoping that I can or we can both set it up in a way that the next people can maintain it and it will be a program that is more widely available and well-known on campus.”

Woodard encouraged others to tend to the garden so that it will grow for years to come.

“With gardening, I think one of the most fruitful parts of the experience is staying with it and seeing the progress in front of your eyes,” Woodard said. “So maybe every week you go back and water, you go back and weed and by the end, you have this very tangible product that you can say, ‘Hey, I was part of this process.’”