Buying Seeds and Planting Starts

 Hello!

This week, myself and other students have done great work moving our plans for a vegetable garden forward. I met with my fellow Rosegrow students Pearl, Gianna, Mark, Tori and Lucy, and one of our faculty advisors Prof. Joanne Campbell, to buy organic vegetable seeds, soil, and supplements. The garden areas have been mapped out and approved, and we planned to start our seedlings in ice cream cones and egg cartons on Monday. Ice cream cones and egg cartons are both biodegradable, so the idea is that seedling may be started in doors in these containers and transferred directly into the earth after the risk of a hard frost has passed; in our corner of the world, this is typically after Mother's Day. We were grateful to be able to buy these supplies with money donated for the Patrick Herman Vegetable Garden, and excited to get to work making our campus and our world a more beautiful place. 

We are able to successfully acquire all of the supplies that we needed to begin to get our garden underway!

Monday, March 17th, was St. Patrick's Day, and the day of our dear friend Patrick Herman's memorial service. His memorial service took place at 12pm, and we wanted to get our seeds started in the morning before hand, so that when the family came to visit the site of the vegetable garden, they could see what vegetables we had planted, and how we were utilizing the greenhouse so far (despite it's current lack of electricity). We planned, as Rosegrow, to meet in the Gertrude Kistler Memorial Library at 10am, and to plant those vegetable seeds! We had already sorted the seeds into those that could be started now, and those which we want to start later in the summer, to make sure that we had produce throughout the summer, and had a good harvest left to share at our campus wide Octoberfest next semester! 

I was thrilled when it was not just Rosegrow students who came, but an entire section of Rosemont's Introduction to Sustainability course! They were a great help in ensuring all of our seeds got planted properly and in a timely manner, and it was lovely to have such a large group of students working together, as well as sustainability professor Radley Reist! 

Prof. Reist gallantly volunteered to fill all our containers with dirt, as we were planting outside, at the site of the future vegetable garden. 

It was a great joy to get to share our project with more of the Rosemont community and get more students and faculty involved in what we're working on, and I was surprised and excited, as I have continually been, by this outpouring of support to make a better planet. 

After starting our seeds, we took the containers up to the greenhouse. Prof. Campbell and Campus Minister Eric Starrs had spent some time cleaning up the greenhouse while we planted. Our greenhouse is still in progress, but, as temperatures at night are no longer so deeply cold, it is warm enough (even without electricity) to support our new baby vegetables. It also offered us the oppo
rtunity to show the greenhouse to those students who hadn't seen it yet, and invite everyone to come help us work on completing it's restoration at our campus wide earth day climate teach-in! 

After other students had left, Pearl Smith, Prof. Campbell and myself stayed behind to organize the seedling and in the greenhouse, and clean it up a little bit more, so that it would be able to visited by Patrick Herman's family later that day. 

We are SO thrilled with the progress made so far! As spring is beginning, we have more and more people dedicated to this project, and all of their passion and love is evident in the work that has been able to take place to date! 

Check back for more updates on this and our other projects, 

Xx Mia Hoppel, Sustainability Intern

A Half-Semester Update

 Hello! 

Welcome back to Nature's Voice, following our spring break, we are now half-way through the semester, and as the temperature begins to heat up, so does the commitment to these sustainability projects! 

The main focus of myself, CCCC, and Rosegrow, have been the rehabilitation of our Greenhouse, in tandem with the establishment of a community vegetable garden and re-wilded patch outside of Connelly Hall. We have had an exciting amount of dedication from all members of Rosemont community in moving these projects forward, with staff, faculty, and students all volunteering their time to help make a better world. The world we dream of is something that's only possible with the continued love and work of people from all walks of life, and it is due to the hope and heart of all of these individuals that any progress is able to be done at all; this is why, first of all, we must always pay respect to everyone in our community, who is working along with us, to ensure that we have hope of a brighter future. 

One of these individuals, who was dedicated to being a steward of our vegetable garden, was Patrick Herman. Patrick Herman worked in the mail room at Rosemont, and was a vital member of our community. He was a well-loved co-worker, and he made himself known to every student on campus, remembering names and facts about all those he encountered, and riding his bike across campus all times of day, in all weather, to keep our community running smoothly. In addition to his friendliness and dedication, he was an avid gardener, and always brought his fresh produce in to share. The tragic passing of Patrick Herman, on the 6th of February, marked a great loss to the Rosemont College community. 

The loss of Patrick inspired many to re-dedicate themselves to our community, as Patrick himself was such a kind, big-hearted, generous person on our campus. 

With this upswell of support, we've been able to create an actionable plan, and work on the creation of our vegetable garden, which will be named the Patrick Herman Memorial Garden. We've received support in the form of monetary donations, plant donations, donation of skilled labor to assist with the building of the garden and the refurbishment of our greenhouse. 

With all of this support, I am hoping that the Patrick Herman Memorial Vegetable Garden can be opened at our Mayday celebration this semester. This will allow our summer stewards, who have volunteered to help maintain this garden when students are on summer break, to take care of our garden once the spring semester is over. 

I am also planning with Rosegrow to begin the planting of several native plants in our re-wilded area, which will be next to Connelly Hall, and to exhibit some of this planting at our Mayday celebration, to give alumni, faculty, staff, and our greater community to see evidence of these projects, and the dedication that has been showed by many this semester. 

With these projects moving forward at high-speed, our seedling plantings are going to begin this Friday! 

Xx Mia Hoppel, Sustainability Intern 

Introducing Nature's Voice

 Hello!

This blog is going to be covering my experiences as a Sustainability Internship at Rosemont College, spring semester of 2025, and the many projects myself and other community members are working on at the end of this school year. This semester, the projects I plan to focus on are:

- Establishing a Re-wilded area outside of Connelly Hall, rich with native plants, to help support our ecosystem and our planet 

-Establish a community vegetable garden behind Hefferman Hall, for students personal use and for use in our dining hall, to ensure our students have access to healthy and organic produce, and help them connect with the process of growing food 

-Assist with the installation of a rain barrel at the Delaware County Intermediate Unit (DCIU), to help them in their continued environmental and sustainability work, in gardens previous interns have established 

-Present on my work and discuss the importance of environmental education at our Earth Day climate teach-in, to get more students, staff, and faculty involved in our work around campus 

I will be working on these projects in tandem with members of the Catholic Climate Covenant Committee (CCCC), which I am a member of, and the Rosegrow Environmental Student Coalition, which I am the student president of. 

Please follow along for more updates on these projects, see how you can get involved, and how we are working to make our planet healthier and our world more sustainable, one small community action at  a time!

Xx Mia Hoppel, Sustainability Intern