FSU & Partners Successfully Wrap Up Ford C3 Grant for Sustainable Nutrition

Thanks to collaboration by Fairmont State University, the City of Fairmont and community volunteers, the Fairmont Community Garden fuels neighborhood revitalization, hands-on learning for students, healthy nutrition and the campus student food bank. For these efforts in promoting a sustainable community, the project was named in fall 2014 as a national winner in the Ford College Community Challenge, the only winner in West Virginia.

In 2014, “Bridging the Gap: Sustainable Nutrition through Community Revitalization,” a proposal submitted by Fairmont State, was one of 10 winning student sustainability projects at nine U.S. colleges and universities in the Ford College Community Challenge (Ford C3). Each of the winning projects was awarded a $25,000 grant from Ford Motor Company to support their work, which is officially wrapping up this spring.

The Fairmont Community Garden is located on Oliver Avenue in Fairmont on reclaimed tennis courts that had fallen out of use. Over the past two years, Christa Blais, who owns the shop All Things Herbal in downtown Fairmont, has organized the garden space. Construction of the beds took place in the spring of 2014; throughout the summer of 2014 volunteers worked to fill the beds with soil. Raised beds were leased, and community members grew fruits, vegetables and flowers in the space. Blais made about 10 donations of fresh fruits and vegetables to The Nest Student Food Bank on campus last season from plants grown at the garden.

“We have the donation side of the garden for The Nest Student Food Bank; all those beds have been rebuilt. We’re getting ready to plant them now. The City of Fairmont re-fenced the whole park, and MCPARC gave us a picnic table. We’re going to do some signage,” Blais said. “We’re going to be working with the Disability Action Center this year to implement use of our wheelchair accessible beds.”

Private gardeners can grow their own food and keep what they grow by leasing bed space for $25 per year. To lease a space, call Blais at (304) 816-1379. “We provide educational classes, teaching people how to plant, how to harvest and how to preserve,” she said.

The Ford C3 grant focused on three areas of impact that have now been completed: the construction of a bridge connecting the garden to Fifth Street Park, increasing the availability of fresh produce for the community and providing learning opportunities for FSU students.

 “We have had tremendous progress. The students from the College of Science and Technology have done a phenomenal job designing a rainwater collection system. Students also have refurbished the beds and gotten them ready for spring planting,” said Dr. Amy Sidwell, Assistant Professor of Community Health Education in the FSU School of Education, Health and Human Performance.

The City Planner’s Office and the City Public Works Department built a 4 foot by 30 foot treated pedestrian bridge over Coal Run to connect the garden site at Oliver Park with Fifth Street Park.

“It was a process from start to finish. The thought was to consider this a big central park for the city. With Fifth Street Park and Oliver Park, it’s about 7 acres so that bridge does a lot for the community to access from one to the other. I could not be happier with the partnership with Fairmont State and the work the students did here. We were making very good progress with the park before but this has been huge,” said Mark Miller from the City of Fairmont Planner’s Office.

The bridge itself is amazing, Blais said. “Now we’re connecting the two parks and making sure the kids who are in the summer feeding program through MCPARC so they can have access to plant and watch their plants grow and eat the fruits of their labor,” she said.

FSU College of Science and Technology students Shawn Davis of Fairmont, Lane Arbogast of Farmington, David Gluss of Elk Garden and Sergei Gentry of Woodstock, Va., designed and constructed the water collection system for the garden. Starting in the fall semester, they met every Friday in between classes to come up with a rough drawing that they made a reality. They built the system with materials from 84 Lumber, V&W Electric and water tanks from Mannington.

“This semester we began building it. The ultimate goal of it is to be self-sufficient so that we don’t have to rely on city water; it will collect the rain water. There are two 275 gallon tanks there,” Davis said.

FSU Community Health Education major Hannah Wolfe of Fairmont will be working with Sidwell on educational activities this summer at the garden. Wolfe led an activity at the garden for West Fairmont Middle School students in the fall.

“We’re going to bringing another group of students from West Fairmont Middle School here. We are going to work with the summer feeding program by giving out educational materials for the adults that are supervising it to do programs with the kids there. We are going to be working with the Student Government Association at FSU and Pierpont, doing educational materials for them, too,” Wolfe said.

Mark Wolf, Assistant Professor of Technology Education in the FSU College of Science and Technology, said the FSU students should be proud of their work at the Community Garden.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better crew of students to work with. They really pulled through. They actually worked with other departments getting students down here helping out. I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress and the success of accomplishing this with the timeline and the constraints that we were held to. I really hope that we can continue to develop the Community Garden,” he said.

Fairmont Community GardenFord C3 GrantChrista BlaisAmy SidwellMark WolfCity of FairmontMark Miller