Students Plant an Idea: Community Garden in City s West End

Three University of Cincinnati industrial design seniors are planting seeds among city groups, advocating for a community garden in Cincinnati’s West End neighborhood.

Rose Heath, Dan Webb and Matthew Corbin created designs for Cornerstone Gardens, an environmentally friendly community garden center with indoor and outdoor amenities including raised garden plots, an ecologically friendly greenhouse, outdoor plaza, a juice bar that serves produce from the garden, a composting center, an observation deck, a library dedicated to providing gardening information, a classroom and a playground.  They sited their proposed center on the corner of Ezzard Charles Drive and Linn Street in the West End, the heart of the new City West Development.

The students from UC's

College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

, completed their project as part of a required course this fall, and so far, they’ve presented it to members of the city’s planning department and to the park board commissioners, according to Dale Murray, assistant professor of industrial design, who led the autumn course in which the students worked.  He added that the motivation for the group’s work is that idea that a community garden can help bring people together through a shared activity of interest to all.  In recent years, housing projects located in the West End have been replaced with new neighborhoods that mix Section 8 housing with upscale town homes.  Thus, the area is in need of amenities and programs that will bring all the residents – old and new – together. 

Said Murray, “This particular site was chosen because the kind of community building and interaction that this facility could provide would be extremely valuable in the West End, an urban area that is undergoing the strains of blending diverse cultures and economic levels…. Sharing the knowledge, the skills, and the art as well as the relaxation, the satisfaction and the joy of growing your own healthy food or beautiful flowers brings an unexpected richness to the inner city….”

Industrial design students usually focus on product design, and group member Rose Heath was happy for the chance to do something different.  “The scope of ideas and the enthusiasm…resulted in a project that I could never have achieved alone,” she said, adding that she saw the garden as appealing to both the neighborhood’s traditional residents who tend to have lower incomes as well as the professionals who have come into the area due to renovation there.

“Cornerstone Gardens would be open to the entire neighborhood.  It could serve to supplement the pantry for the more established residents…. Organic gardening’s role in health and organic food trends make the concept popular,” she explained.

More presentations and displays of the proposal may follow among members of the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, the Civic Garden Center, the Cincinnati Horticultural Society and the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority.

According to Dave Prather, supervising architect, Cincinnati Park Board, “This idea has legs… We should show this to as many people as possible and see what we can do to make it happen.”