Students at Queen’s are planting gardens that can last for generations to come.
After winning $1,000 in the annual Deg Change for a Living Planet pitch competition, Shania Sheth, HealthSci ’25, is turning the grant money into campus gardens, bug houses, and a seed library. The competition is held annually by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada’s Living Planet at Campus program.
“There are many small things we’re hoping to come together to make a really big impact,” Sheth said in an interview with The Journal.
Since her win, Sheth has spent the last year connecting with faculty and other students at Queen’s to create a project plan more ambitious than her original pitch, titled: Gardens of Sustainable Change at Queen’s: Enhancing Biodiversity through Native Plants and Engaging with Indigenous Perspectives.
“A lot of what we learned through the WWF competition was about native plants and their importance,” Sheth said.
The first part of the project began this summer, with a team of Queen’s student volunteers planting an Indigenous native plant garden at the Four Directions (4D) Indigenous Student Centre.
“Culturally significant plant species are a little bit harder to find, so the grant would really help with finding those plants,” Sheth said.
Plants such as sweetgrass, used in Indigenous smudging ceremonies, grow in the garden, which Sheth hopes will increase the opportunity for education on Indigeneity at Queen’s.
Before the frost rolls in later this term, Sheth and her team will harvest seeds from the plants grown and store them in a seed library at the 4D centre. Next year, these seeds can be replanted without the need for further funding to keep the garden going.
“[The seed library] will serve as a valuable resource for students, faculty, and staff who are interested in sustainable gardening and local food production,” Sheth said.
While storing seeds for future years, the seed library also allows of the Queen’s community to take seeds for their own gardens, like borrowing a library book. Sheth said she hopes the seed library will become a student hub where people can come to learn about the importance of certain plants to Indigenous groups.
The small grant was stretched a long way due to Sheth’s collaboration with the Society for Conservation Biology, which provided the volunteers with gardening tools and other capital. Sheth used some of the grant to revitalize the Society’s native pollinator garden outside of the Biosciences Complex, promoting biodiversity as the plants will provide habitats for declining pollinator populations such as monarch butterflies and bumblebees.
“We’ve actually bought a lot of the plants from local farm areas. It’s been really nice to the community,” Sheth said.
For her next venture, Sheth wants to run bug house workshops for volunteers in the fall. The workshops will teach students about native pollinators and build bug houses which Sheth says are like bird houses for bugs.
During the competition, Sheth and four other students from Canadian universities heard from WWF speakers and worked on their original pitch of a green space focusing on improving student mental health and incorporating Indigenous values.
Today, Sheth hopes the gardens will benefit the bugs, biodiversity, and the student body at Queen’s.
“It’s hard to ignore that relationship between mental health, physical health, and the environment,” Sheth said.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].