UT Concho Community Garden

Jennifer Perez: jenniferperez1592@yahoo.com

Volunteering at the Concho Community Garden was an extremely easy and accessible opportunity to help out the community. It was a great way to keep the idea of growing and planting your own produce alive.

For my service-learning project, I decided to volunteer at the “UT Concho Community Garden.” From what I have learned, the UT Concho Community Garden” is UT’s first community garden. The garden is kept and managed by students, staff, faculty, and residents of the Austin area. There are a plethora of garden plots at the community, all of which require intensive care by members of both UT’s and Austin’s public.
When I went to the garden, I was assigned a garden plot by the volunteer coordinator. I was asked to remove weeds from the soil and help create space for new crops to settle in. I spent roughly two hours doing this. As I was removing the weeds, it made me ponder about my environment and the type of care that goes into keeping our environment clean and accessible. The weeds destroy the plants. From what I have observed, it destroyed the tomato plants, onions, and other plants existing within the plot.
Though my task of removing weed from the garden plot may seem plain and objective, I learned a lot from my two hours at the garden. Pulling the weed out made me reflect on my studies and how that served as a metaphor to my life at UT. The soil covering the plants symbolized the foundation, or the coursework, that UT has laid out for me. The healthy plants serve as a metaphor to what I could achieve, or obtain, if I keep my mind focused on what truly matters. The weeds represents distractions and the idea that I need to cut myself off from those distractions every now and then in order to succeed.
As a result, I learned a lot while working at the UT Concho Community Garden. Though most of what I did revolved around beautifying the community, it sparked a light, or a sense of beauty, within me as well. What I got out of this experience was that I like the weed, need to take care of myself every now and then, in order to grow and succeed.

Improvement of Concho Community Garden-A Givepulse event, I signed up with Givepulse, and helped pull weeds, and beautify the garden. For verification, contact the host of the event.

From 9:00 to 12:00, I participated in removing the grass patch with a shovel to make more space for a new plot to be installed. After removing the grass patches, I transitioned my work to removing undesired weeds from the okra patch near the garden fence. I also worked the wheelbarrow, moving soil and unearthed grass patches to the designated plots or the compost. During the morning I participated in the event, although the garden was quite crowded there were many people who did not actively nor efficiently carry out their work, despite being told of their duties. Perhaps stricter specializing of tasks would make more efficient the entire process and create more effective output.

We pulled weeds and grasses from each plant so that they can grow stronger and healthier.

Tended to the gardening. Pulling weeds and grass from the plant areas so plants could go better and healthier.

Weeded and watered the garden.