Organic Garden certified by the USDA

Randolph College’s Organic Garden was recently certified as a People’s Garden by the United States Department of Agriculture.

The designation recognizes gardens that produce local food, use sustainable maintenance practices, provide educational opportunities, and bring people together in their community.

“The Organic Garden checks all of those boxes,” said Lindsey Van Zile, sustainability and campus projects coordinator. “The garden is an experiential learning opportunity for students and community members to grow their own food using sustainable practices. We also have multiple protected wildlife habitat spaces in our garden, which makes the garden its own little ecosystem.”

The garden is also a National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat; that initiative requires gardens to provide food for wildlife, a water source, cover for wildlife to take shelter, space to raise their young, and to use sustainable practices for garden maintenance.

The Organic Garden includes community plots, 鸡, a protected amphibian pond, an edible perennials food forest, and a native fruit tree orchard. And it continues to grow.

The College installed a new greenhouse in the garden last week. Van Zile is also working to create a pollinator meadow in the orchard as part of the Lynchburg Bee City’s No Mow initiative. This spring, Van Zile will introduce nine new 鸡 to the flock.

Randolph also offers an organic gardening course to students in the fall and spring each year.

The People’s Garden program, launched in 2009, was named in honor of Abraham Lincoln, who created the USDA and called it the “People’s Department.” It celebrates gardening and educates the public, underscoring Lincoln’s inclusive scope for the USDA to include “useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of the word.”