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Lindblom Students Design Community Garden

 Students from a Lindblom engineering class are working on designing a community garden. (Feb. 25, 2015)
Students from a Lindblom engineering class are working on designing a community garden. (Feb. 25, 2015)
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DNAinfo/Andrea V. Watson

WEST ENGLEWOOD — Engineering students from Lindblom Math and Science Academy say their latest class project — designing a garden — will make a difference in the community.

“I’m really enjoying it because I feel like it is a chance to give back to the community,” said Murphy Gay, a 17-year-old student at Lindblom, 6130 S. Wolcott Ave. 

“I think it’s a lot of fun, it’s also kind of a big responsibility because everyone has their own parts they have to tackle. But it’s nice we can work in teams,” he said.

Their instructor, Lawrence Bass, refers to his class of second- and third-year students as the Global Design Team. He said he wanted to give them real world experience and that’s exactly what they’re getting.

The project is to expand the layout of the existing Hermitage Street Community Gardens, 5641 S. Hermitage St. The community garden was first started in 2011 by Cordia Pugh, an Englewood resident who serves as the garden’s coordinator.

 Students from a Lindblom engineering class are working on designing a community garden. (Feb. 25, 2015)
Students from a Lindblom engineering class are working on designing a community garden. (Feb. 25, 2015)
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Photo courtesy of Lindblom Math & Science Academy

Currently, three lots, which were donated by a local nonprofit called Growing Home, have been transformed into 40 individual plots for the community to use. Now with even more people interested in growing their own fresh foods, Pugh has decided that it’s best to expand. That’s where the Global Design Team comes in.

Through OpenLands and NeighborSpace, Pugh acquired three more vacant lots to use for the 2015 growing season. Bass said he approached Pugh last year and asked if she would be willing to collaborate with his students. He met her at the Illinois Institute of Technology where an architecture professor brought in Pugh as one of the project judges for the final presentations for a student design class. The project was on a development that included Lindblom.

“I was intrigued by the student presentations and discovered that most college-level design classes culminate in such projects and presentations,” Bass said.

Since mid-October, his class has been working on the layout to add three additional lots to the garden.

The students will create a model for a new community space, which includes designing the structures. Bass said there will be a gazebo, benches, a storage structure, pathways and more. Students are even working on designing the website.

“It’s one thing to expose them to the pedagogy and just the theory of doing all of this, but it’s another thing entirely when you require that they actually implement what they design,” Bass said. “It takes it from the realm of 'They did something and they’ll forget it as soon as the academic year is over.' I don’t think they will ever forget [this project],” he said.

For many of the students, this class project is bigger than just a grade.

Devin Montgomery, 16, said he wants to study civil engineering when he goes to college. Working on the garden’s design is preparing him for that career, he said, but admitted that he failed to see the connection in the beginning.

“It took me a little time because I saw this as a small scale project but as we got deeper into it, there are so many aspects about this and it’s really interesting to see all the logistics about it,” Montgomery said.

He and Gay are apart of a trio that also includes 16-year-old Brenda Macias. Their team is called the Water Reclamation Group.

Macias said the goal is to find ways to reuse water so that residents don’t have high water bills.

“We’re making these little water systems that collect water from rain to conserve so they can use that rain water to feed the plants and not waste as much water,” she said.

“I feel like I’m making a really big difference,” Macias said.

The garden is slated to open in May.

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