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Sustainability BY SOPHIA MAY

Michigan Adds Triosity from students, faculty and staff alike who frequent these facilities

wo lively new additions to the East Quad and Bursley dining halls at the
University of Michigan (U-M) in Ann Arbor have sparked wonder and cu-
Vertical works of art.
daily. Officially known as tower gardens, these vertical
fields are just as much educational pieces as they are

For junior Carly Rosenberg, what started as a
group assignment in her Environmental Studies course
turned into a project with a concrete outcome. This
past winter semester, Rosenberg connected with Keith
Soster and Alex Bryan at Michigan Dining to gauge
actual interest for tower gardens in dining halls across
my semester-long class,” Rosenberg said.
Tower Gardens campus. “I was eager to extend this project beyond
This past summer, Rosenberg interned for LA Urban
Farms, an urban farm in Los Angeles that grows out of
tower gardens. Over the course of the summer, she was
on a team tasked with tending to tower gardens in the
LA area, located in both commercial and residential
neighborhoods. “University of Southern California
and University of California - Los Angeles both have
several tower gardens on their campuses that supply
food to their dining halls,” she said. “Seeing these
gave me a similar vision for U-M.”
This observation helped Rosenberg in solidifying
her idea for tower gardens at the university, and facili-
tating an interdisciplinary relationship between LA
Urban Farms, the U-M Campus Farm and MDining.
Standing around 4 feet tall, the gardens at U-M are
Pylon growing towers supplied by LA Urban Farms.
They are easy to take care of, use no soil and require
90 percent less water than traditional gardens. Better
yet, harvesting is possible two to three weeks after
seedlings are transferred to the gardens.
The seedlings planted in the East Quad tower
garden (East Quad Dining houses seven restaurants
under one roof) are cultivated in-house under grow
lights, whereas the garden in Bursley Hall, a mixed
gender residence hall predominently housing first-
year students, uses plants grown in conjunction with
the U-M Campus Farm. “We decided to get involved
because it’s a great way to connect people to where
their food comes from,” said Connor Kippe, one of
the student managers at the Campus Farm. “We usu-
ally start seedlings of leafy greens to transfer to the
garden, because they are easier to manage and require
lower energy and nutrient inputs than fruiting veggies.”
The Campus Farm starts the seeds in its greenhouse,
growing them in squares of rockwool. Rockwool is a
horticultural growing media made from the natural
ingredients Basalt rock and chalk that comes in two
formats: rigid slabs, blocks and cubes or granulate,
which is basically water absorbent or water repel-
lent. After the seedlings germinate, they are brought
from the Farm to Bursley Hall and set directly into
the tower garden.
The gardens’ locations were determined based on
the unique features of campus dining halls — East
Quad’s Sustainable Monday initiative and Bursley’s
influence as the main dining facility on U-M’s North
Campus allowed opportunity for both an educational
supplement as well as cross-campus reach.

20 | NOVEMBER 2017 ON-CAMPUS HOSPITALITY