A Moveable Feast

Credit: Christina Cho The garden at the GSD

A garden on wheels may soon be rolling up to your department or dorm, thanks to GSD student Christina Cho. The project, undertaken this spring with the support of an OFS Sustainability Grant, combines food, public art, and community gardening into a unique setting: the Mobile Ethnic Garden.

Working on an assignment for an MIT course called Public Art: Issues in Spatial Cultural Identity, Cho started from the idea that food is a great way of understanding different cultures. She wanted to create a space that would bring Harvard’s community together not only around eating but growing diverse kinds of food—and came up with a garden that actually comes to the community. She designed a network of raised planter beds set on wheels that can be easily transported and fit together in multiple arrangements. The beds double as benches, offering visitors a way to gather and interact. Plus, the format benefits plants as well as people: the garden’s mobility means that it can maximize sunlight, and raised beds reduce soil compaction and improve water conservation and drainage.

A planting party at the GSD kicked off the first growing season, focused primarily on Korean fruits and vegetables. (Subsequent seasons will feature plants important to other culinary traditions.) As word has spread, everyone from students looking for a sunny spot on their lunch breaks to neighborhood parents hoping to plant seeds with their children have started using the space. Says Cho, community volunteers begin to feel a “vested interest in continuing to come back and to take care of what they sowed.” She hopes the garden can build a tradition at Harvard as it moves around campus. A Korean barbeque is planned for September to celebrate the first harvest.

If you are interested in bringing the Mobile Ethnic Garden to your school, please contact sustainability@harvard.edu.

About the Designer

Cho is entering her final semester at GSD. Before coming to Harvard, she practiced structural engineering with the firm Arup, where she worked on the design for Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco (the world’s largest LEED Platinum public building). She welcomes you to email her with comments or suggestions.

Visit her project blog here.