Student-Led Garden Project Brings Peace and Produce to OU-Tulsa Campus

students tend to young plants at the community garden

Student-Led Garden Project Brings Peace and Produce to OU-Tulsa Campus

two students tend to young plants at the community garden

A garden can provide many things to many people. It can be a place of rest and rejuvenation, a place to reconnect with beauty in nature, and even a way to feed loved ones the healthy, good-for-the-body ingredients that just taste better straight from the ground. Another way a garden can benefit that may not come readily to mind is as an opportunity to learn. But that’s just what the culinary medicine program on the OU-Tulsa campus has achieved with their Growing Health Garden – a place of peace, produce and practical learning.

“I find tending to the garden to be therapeutic for many reasons,” shared Courtney Harmon, project coordinator in culinary medicine and staff sponsor for the garden. “You have to pay attention to the ever-occurring changes taking place to find success in growing fruits and vegetables. Soil, sun and water all interact with each plant differently, and there is always something new to learn about these interactions. When you’ve spent some time in the garden, you learn how hard it is to grow something to eat. You learn the true value of food through growing it on your own.”

a croup of students tend garden plots at the community garden

Chase Barnett, OU-TU School of Community Medicine student, and co-creator of the Growing Health Garden, along with graduate Andrew Baker, shared how his inspiration came initially from his grandparents who always had a garden on their farm. This experience led him to realize how what we eat affects our overall health.

“I wanted to encourage patients, faculty, staff and students to eat more fruits and vegetables, and there’s no better way than simply having exposure to it and allowing people to sample from the garden and use the samples at home for free,” Barnett said. “Throughout my first couple years of medical school, lifestyle medicine expanded my knowledge of nutrition and the importance of it, as well as how to counsel my future patients about it.”

So, during the difficult days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Barnett and Baker got an idea to bring some well-being back to campus.

“I had the idea to create a garden as a form of wellness, both nutritional and therapeutic,” Barnett said.

The two medical students worked together to develop the idea, fundraise for necessary supplies, and develop a formal plan for presentation to campus leadership with guidance from Marianna Wetherill, Ph.D., MPH, RDN/LD, associate professor at the Hudson College of Public Health and OU-TU School of Community Medicine and director of the Root Cause Food Equity Lab at OU-Tulsa. And in the summer of 2021, the garden idea put down roots in reality. It is located on the Tulsa Schusterman campus near the Schusterman Clinic, where the entire campus community and visitors have access.

“The garden was designed to provide OU-Tulsa students with exposure to teaching gardens, leadership opportunities for maintaining them, and a tangible extension of lifestyle medicine outside the classroom for the benefit of OU-Tulsa students, OU Physicians staff and OU Physicians patients,” Wetherill said.

Wetherill described how students, faculty, staff and patients alike benefit from the presence of the garden. Students who spend time working there find it a way to relax between classes. The garden also produces enough for tasting, sharing and use in the classroom, she said.

“We regularly use the fresh herbs, edible flowers, vegetables and berries that are grown in our culinary medicine classes as seasonality allows,” Wetherill said. “Utilizing produce from the garden helps to raise awareness of growing seasons and different plant varieties, while also fostering a connection between community and the food environment.”

And, new this summer, according to Wetherill, physician assistant program students got in on the fun by completing assigned rotations in the garden – worm feeding, weeding and harvesting – as part of their lifestyle medicine course.

Harmon, who has a background in culinary and food science and is a gardener herself, now serves as the staff sponsor for this student-led project.

When asked about future plans for the Growing Health Garden, Harmon cited this excerpt from the original proposal for the garden: “We believe a community garden can be a useful step in shifting cultural norms related to food and health. As the health outlook in Tulsa continues to improve, the establishment of a community garden would be a fruitful next step towards collaboratively improving the lives of the Tulsa community through education, nutrition, and experience.”

By Bonnie Rucker

Article Published: Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Return to Inside OU >