Saint Joseph’s University Community Garden
Fall 2023
Fellow: Charlotte Ashley
Joe Gibson, Carina Seabra, Juliet Gentilucci, Cara Halligan
Community Partner
The SJU Community Garden is an organization that grows and donates fresh produce to local food banks and other organizations in need in the Philadelphia area. The organization grows their produce in an on-campus garden at Saint Joseph’s University and has donated over 2,193lbs of fresh produce. The SJU Community Garden has donated to Narberth Community Food Bank, Media Food Bank, Martha’s Choice Marketplace, Upper Darby Food Bank, and SJU’s very own Hawkhub, among others. The garden also serves as a mindful retreat for students on campus.
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Design Question
We were tasked with creating a template for plant information sheets. These information sheets are to be used on the SJU Community Gardens website, along with a QR code that is scannable by the plants in the garden. The purpose of these information sheets is to give anyone who wants information for certain plants such as diseases, ideal planting and harvest times, as well as recipes. The template itself came from collaboration from our team members as well as the SJU Community Gardens as well. Our final product is meant to be easy to read and have enough information to be able to plant, harvest, and use the fresh food in homemade recipes.
Strategic Thinking
To collaborate with the community garden effectively, we prioritized co-creation and equity-centered community design (ECCD). As we used many methods to learn about the Community Garden, co-creation allowed us to consider how working together could create value for the organization, where ECCD taught us to strive for active listening and effective communication to meet their needs (Knight, 2022, Ch. 2).
With these design frameworks in mind, a comparative media analysis of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Plants Database provided our group with a functional example of the type of information sheets we’d be creating. Taking inspiration from a strong mentor account like this provided us with the knowledge that clear organization and easy navigation would add value for the Community Garden in our final deliverables (USDA Plants Database).
We also strove to fully understand the mission of the Community Garden, and Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle Analysis helped us to understand why the organization completes the work they do. Together with the Community Garden, we agreed they complete their work to ultimately relieve food insecurity for local communities in an environmentally-sustainable way. After discovering the underlying “why,” our work creating the plant information sheets made sense as a tool to further this mission. The sheets provide the necessary information to also participate in growing fresh produce and contribute to a more sustainable future (Sinek, 2011).
Co-Creation
Our group collaborated with the SJU Community Garden to produce graphics that spread knowledge about the plants grown at the community garden. Our co-creation involved data collection from our community partner and the designing and creating of graphics to showcase this information. Our community partner provided us with data about the plants grown in the garden, which is their specialty. In return, we offered our media and design expertise to ensure the creation of visually engaging and informative graphics. While our projects were driven by the needs and wants of our community partner, we advised our community partner on the ways that these changes could take place in a way that follows design principles for a visually appealing final product. In this way, we were able to utilize the specialties of both parties to complete the best final product possible. Our community partner was able to contact us with any changes that they desired and we met on Zoom to discuss any questions or requests.
Impact Story
The results of this project are that we created information sheet templates for the SJU Community Garden. These templates serve a multitude of purposes for the SJU community and surrounding communities. One purpose of the templates is that SJU students can use the information to garden themselves or create their own recipes. The templates are public on the SJU Community Garden website so anyone has access to the information which is another benefit. Additionally, the template can be useful for the SJU Community Garden’s community partners such as local food banks. The template can give recipes to the food banks and additional information about the vegetables they are receiving from the garden. The organizers of the SJU Community Garden can additionally edit the templates to add new information in as well. It is customizable to whatever new information and media they choose to display.
