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PEOPLE
BACK TO SEED
A story about a forgotten space, and one student's dedication to it
Aaron Olsen, Overland Park junior, and Greg Hill, Brentwood, Tenn., junior, work in the plot of land Olsen turned into a garden. Olsen tried to recruit a larger group to help with the garden, but was unsuccessful.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF AARON OLSEN
by Frank Tankard
Pardon me if this story isn't about anything that you will care about — if all it's about is an empty space that maybe nobody except one guy ever cared about.
A year and a half ago I wrote a story for The Kansan about Aaron Olsen. He was starting a garden on campus, on a piece of land that had been abandoned five years earlier and had become somewhat of an eyesore — the type of eyesore people might have complained about if it was in a more prominent place.
As it was, this piece of land sat in a forgotten corner of campus. Even describing where it is proves difficult; It's on the east side of campus, near the scholarship halls, behind the University Relations building, which is behind Smith Hall (the building in front of the Kansas Union with
the Moses statue in front of it).
Just know this: it was a weed patch, and when I heard about Olsen's design to turn it into a garden, I figured it would make an easy story. What I didn't figure was how Olsen's effort would stick in my mind, or how sorry I'd be to see the garden in its current state.
What Olsen, then a sophomore, set out to do was turn the weed patch, which he'd walked through every day on his way to campus from K.K. Amini Scholarship Hall, into a nice, vegetable-producing garden.
This simple act may not sound like much to you, but to the story — one student's effort to turn a weed patch into a garden — held all sorts of higher, parable-like implications: man vs. nature, growth vs. decay, caring vs. neglect, action vs. idleness.
Think of every time you've stepped around a broken bottle
on the sidewalk, driven past a weedy parking lot, or walked by a spray-painted wall. Think of every time you've thought, "Somebody ought to do something about that."
THE GARDEN'S NOT REALLY WHAT'S MOST EFFICIENT. WHAT SUPPORTS THE COMMUNITY MOST,WHAT DRIVES VOLUNTEERING AND GETS STUDENTS INVOLVED IS REALLY MORE IMPORTANT."
AARON OLSEN,
OVERLAND PARK JUNIOR
But moving from desire to action is no small task. It takes time, effort, planning, dedication, blah blah blah. Not fun stuff. And that's where Olsen was able to turn the corner — he continued to care when the work got dull.
He told me a year and a half ago, soon after hed first sunk his shovel into the soil, that it would take at least a year before the plot of land really started to resemble a garden.
"The way I think about it, it would maybe be more efficient to have a fundraising event and take the money to Costco or Sam's Club and buy some cans of beans or something," he said then. "The garden's not really what's most efficient. What supports the community most, what drives volunteering and gets students involved is really more important."
Over the course of the fall and spring semesters, with shovels, hammers and hands, Olsen and the small group of volunteers he enlisted slowly nurtured the weed patch into something that started to resemble a garden. The work was slow and tedious.
First, with help from Facilities Operations, they tore down the abandoned playground equipment that had sat rusting in the five years since Hilltop Child Development Center moved away. They broke down the dilapidated deck. They shoveled out the gravel that covered the soil. They started to build garden beds, using boards from the deck and the playground equipment, and used some of the gravel to fill paths between the beds.
Olsen worked tirelessly — shoveling, driving nails into boards, weeding, planting. This patch of land was his baby.
In the spring, Olsen and his volunteers filled the beds with topsoil and started planting. Soon enough, up sprouted tomatoes, peas, rosemary, basil, carrots. It wasn't yet what Olsen had envisioned — there wasn't enough produce to make a
substantial donation to a soup kitchen —but from a weed patch, food had started growing.
This is why the state of the garden today is so spiirting. Pass through it and you see only sparse signs of the months of labor: a hose buried in weeds, a group of tree stumps arranged as seats, some boards nailed together. Just a neglected piece of land, one of several you walk past every day.
Olsen has been studying in Spain since September. Last spring, he held a meeting with the idea of finding people to tend to the garden while he was gone. Few showed up.
In July, Olsen will return. He says he will work to restore the space. Below the weeds, the structure for a garden is there. For now, this neglected corner of campus — where beauty once started to grow — waits for him.
01. 25.2007 JAYPLAY < 13