The Lone Gardener

Covid-19 restrictions make ‘community’ gardening a one-man affair

By Eastern Magazine

As this magazine reported last fall, Erik Budsberg, indefatigable sustainability coordinator at Eastern, has long been committed to building up the EWU Community Garden, a verdant plot of organic goodness located on the southwest corner of campus.

“The goal has always been to grow food to give to the EWU food pantry,” says Budsberg. And for the past several years he’s been doing just that, while also working to educate Eastern students and employees about the benefits of growing their own food.

This spring, Budsberg was busy putting the finishing touches on a garden redesign to help manage weeds and installing new raised-garden beds. He was also helping horticulturally inclined students like Angela Denton, a junior majoring in biology, start what he and the members are calling the Easy Come, Easy Grow Gardening Club.

“I met Erik during a produce giveaway—I was so surprised we even had a garden center,” recalls Denton.

“We were ready to do a lot more in the garden than in the past,” adds Budsberg. “It was really exciting.” Then came COVID-19, and an end to all in-person events, including student club activities.

Thus did Budsberg find himself, once again, managing the garden space alone. He planted seeds in the greenhouse, tended to their growth, and then transplanted the starts into the garden. These days he’s engaged in a mostly one-man battle against weeds, while also staying on top of his additional responsibilities in EWU’s sustainability office and juggling childcare responsibilities at home.

But the added challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic only strengthened Budsberg’s drive to grow healthy food for the campus community. Rather than waiting until the fall harvest to help stock fresh produce in the EWU Central Food Pantry, Budsberg is doing something new this year: giving away vegetable starts.

In late May and early June, he set up a table at the Central Food Pantry room in Tawanka Hall. It featured tomato, zucchini, squash and pepper plants for students who wanted to grow their own produce. He also helped educate students on how to start a home garden.

Meanwhile, Budsberg and Denton say, the gardening club will go on. For now, their activities are restricted mostly to a bi-weekly Zoom meeting. But they’re hoping, as the state moves through its phases of reopening, that student interns and volunteers will be able to return to the garden later this summer or fall.

Still, whether he’s weeding and reaping alone or with help, Budsberg is confident the harvest from the EWU Community Garden will continue to benefit the EWU Central Food Pantry. He says he and the Easy Come, Easy Grow Gardening Club are on a mission to help curb food insecurity on campus.

“I think it’s extremely important to know how to grow your own food,” says Denton. “Part of our plan is to help students—we want them to see that it’s really not as intimidating as people think.”