FARMINGTON — The longtime dream of having a community garden at the University of Maine at Farmington has come to fruition.

Last spring, educators Gretchen Legler and Misty Beck offered a course focused on getting UMF’s first campus garden designed, built, planted, tended and harvested, all while learning remotely.

“The Dig It course was offered online,” Beck said. “The students wrote a successful proposal, completed experiential projects at home on either ladder or patio gardens.”

Other faculty members got as far as planning before students graduated.

“We’re following through,” Leger said. It helped that the creative writing center got torn down, she said.

Legler, who teaches creative writing, had taken a three-year leave to obtain her divinity degree.

“While there, I planned a project around a garden,” she said. “One reason I went to divinity school is I saw a real hunger in students to do something real. I wanted to address that.”

A friend told Legler about grant opportunities through the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust in Boston. A $6,300 grant was awarded to the UMF project.

The money paid for the loam, the hemlock to build the beds and some seeds. UMF is providing compost while Beck and others have donated extra plants and seeds.

“We got something from everybody, ” Legler said. “We’re trying to focus on fall crops, it’s so late in the season. We’ll donate produce to food banks, churches, or once students come back to the UMF Thrifty Beaver Co-op” for students in need. “That will be one of our prime destinations.

Legler said, “The students who took my summer term course researched and planned this garden. We followed their design as much as possible.

Even though netting surrounds the raised beds, deer have stepped over it and nibbled on several plants.

“When the campus was abandoned, there was nothing to scare them away,” Legler said.

Beck’s students designed the bed layout. James Cooke and Sara Taylor helped build them.

One bed is elevated for wheelchair accessibility, Legler said.

“A second elevated bed is in the works,” Taylor said. “It will have benches on either side for people to sit and tend plants. We’re trying to do faster-growing crops to get more harvested.”

Cooke plans to make white stakes with plant names on them.

“It’s for my own sake too. I get confused,” he said.

Taylor is the project’s social media person. Facebook and Instagram accounts feature videos and other posts of the garden’s progression.

“Some beds are reserved,” Legler said. “Elementary education professor Kathryn Will will use one for a course. Geologist Doug Reusch wants to do an experiment in the garden this fall using salt.”

“He wants to line the pathways with salt, see if it captures carbon dioxide,” Cooke added.

“This was the dream,” Legler said. “To have this be a classroom, a place for authentic, experiential classroom education. Sara told me, ‘This feels so real.'”

Taylor learned basic construction skills from the garden project.

“I’d never really transplanted before” she said. “I transplanted all of these, they’re still alive. I’m learning about different bugs that attack, learning as we go with the deer.

“It’s cool to build something with our hands,” Taylor said.

“I’m getting experience with starting a project, being part of the planning process, not after it’s been established,” Cooke said. “Watching something come into being is exciting.”

Beck said, “It’s been wonderful watching all the good work.”

This fall an honors course, Gardening for Change, will be offered, she added.

“Students will be outside in the garden, surveying other community gardens. Introducing students to college life, getting them to think about growing things,” Beck said. “We’re really lucky to get this space.”

The first vegetables harvested were delivered Aug. 14 to the Care and Share Food Closet in Farmington by Beck, Legler and Taylor. About 7 pounds of zucchini, 3 pounds of pickling cucumbers, dill and parsley were given to the pantry. Food closet volunteer Therese Hersey gave them a tour of the facility.

While the produce was being harvested, UMF staff member Matt Shultz stopped to ask if he could have some dill to make pickles. He left with several heads.

“This is what it’s all about,” Legler said.

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