Our Crowdfunding Groups
Thank You!
This campaign has concluded and is in update mode, but you can still make a gift to The Garden Club, by going here
After reaching our original goal, we have created a new stretch goal of $3,000. This would allow us to create 5 additional garden beds for our community garden!
Garden Club was founded in the fall of 2018 by our president, Cameron Lilly. At its start, Garden Club consisted of a small group of friends, and in the last year it has grown to have over 75 members. Our work is done at the student experimental farm, a two acre piece of land on the outskirts of Cal Poly’s campus that we share with Polyponics, a club that grows food using aquaculture. We focus on implementing regenerative agriculture practices, working towards the goal of creating a permaculture system. Permaculture refers to self-sustaining agriculture achieved by planting plants, raising animals, maintaining healthy soil, and many other aspects that all work together harmoniously to cultivate a well-rounded and balanced system.
To accomplish this, Garden Club consistently works on multiple projects, each with different focuses. Our current projects include maintaining our food forest, planting annual plants, using our medicinal plants to make health tinctures, building a chicken coop, expanding our composting program, and raising our three cats. In our food forest we are growing a variety of fruit trees supplemented with cover crops, nitrogen fixing plants, and other other helpful species. Our annual plant beds produce most of the delicious and nutritious fruits and vegetables that Garden Club is able to consume; currently we’re growing a variety of lettuces, kale, carrots, tomatillos, eggplant, chard, strawberries, and so much more! In our medicinal gardens, which are new this year, we grow a variety of plants and herbs that we are in the process of fermenting to create health-boosting tincture drinks. We are almost done building a chicken coop and hope to soon buy chickens whose eggs we will use and whose droppings will be nutritious for our soil. We are experimenting with a variety of methods for composting, and plan on distributing compost buckets to interested community members so they can bring their compost to the farm and contribute to our compost program! Additionally, this year we adopted three previously cats from Woods Animal Shelter who are now happily living at the farm and helping us catch gophers! Soon, we hope to be capable of producing enough food to host free community dinners consisting of our local and organic Garden Club grown fruits and vegetables!
If you choose to donate to our campaign, your donation will be put towards buying necessary supplies: plants, seeds, mulch, soil, compost, building materials, tools, and food for our furry/feathered friends. Your donation will most importantly be helping us towards our overarching goal to continue driving progress at our farm and create a productive permaculture system in order to pave the way towards a future for food based on sustainable agriculture. You can help Garden Club achieve these goals by either donating or sharing our campaign with friends and family via social media or other outlets! Even small donations go a long way, and we truly appreciate your help!
Helps us buy perennials and medicinal herbs used for cooking and homeopathic remedies.
Helps us buy a new fruit tree which will provide food from the garden.
Helps us buy food for our chickens and barn cats which act as natural pest control for our garden.
Helps us buy all of the materials for a new vegetable garden bed, which will produce the food we hope to us for free community dinners.
Helps us buy a new flock of chickens that help us maintain the garden all year long.
