Collaboration with Green Dining and Greens to Grounds

This semester Morven Kitchen Garden has been fortunate enough to be collaborate with other groups across grounds that are also promoting sustainable food practices. These include Green Dining and Greens to Grounds.Every other Wednesday this fall, members of Green Dining came out to volunteer at the farm. Green Dining is a student lead group that identifies and advocates operational change as it relates food systems, waste management and resource conservation at the university. The group is lead by Chris Stevens, the dining sustainability manager for Aramark, UVa's food provider. Greens to Grounds was established just last spring (2014). They offer CSA shares developed specifically for students and sourced from local farms. They support sustainable food production practices and educate UVa on the importance of environmentally conscious food purchases. They work with community gardens, and local farms like us to provide affordable produce to students on grounds. We often supply our beautiful flowers to Greens to Grounds! This is the first year we have collaborated with Greens to Grounds, but we hope to expand our partnership during the next growing season and beyond.Both these groups have done tremendous efforts at educating students on the importance of local food during their initial encounters with food autonomy in order to affect their life-long purchasing decisions. It's great that we can work together with them as we all have similar goals. Here's to more collaboration in the future to change the relationship UVa has with the food that we eat!