Our Projects
Gardening
The UT CEC Gardening Committee plants ornamental gardens around campus featuring native Texas plants, organizes tree plantings every semester, and has started UT's first student-run community vegetable garden! Read on for an overview of our projects, and check out our blog for the latest! Also, feel free to contact gardening@utenvironment.org if you have any questions or want to learn more!
Current Projects: 
UT Concho Community Garden
The UT Concho Community Garden is UT's first community garden! The garden was constructed by volunteers early Spring 2011 and began its first season March 2011. The garden is an ongoing collaboration between the UT Campus Environmental Center, the UT Office of Sustainability, and the UT Division of Housing and Food Service, with great support from UT Landscaping Services. The garden consists of 28 plots, including 19 individual plots, 3 demonstration plots, 3 plots for growing food and herbs to be utilized in UT dining halls, and 3 student organization plots. The garden also includes 5 fruit trees, including peach, gala apple (2), Asian pear, and Italian fig, as well as additional landscaped areas. Everything grown at the garden is entirely organic. See our progress report and plan of the garden.
Community Gardening Workdays:
- Wednesdays from 4:00 - 5:30 pm
- Saturdays from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
We hope the UT Concho Community Garden will become a vibrant resource for our campus and city communities where participants will have the opportunity to garden, learn and share knowledge about gardening and food production, gain awareness of the many issues surrounding food, society, and the environment, propose and pursue interesting and progressive projects, and participate in free classes and events. We hope to grow an ample amount of produce for individual consumption, for UT dining halls, to be donated to a partner local food shelter, and in the future, to supply an on-campus gardener's market.
The garden is located on campus at 2108 Concho St. It's easily accessible by foot, bike, the East Campus UT shuttle, or by car (there's free parking in the neighborhood).
Plots are available for individuals (any student, staff, or faculty of UT) and student organizations! If you're interested in getting a plot, visit our blog for more info.
-volunteer anytime
-propose and lead a project that would benefit the garden
-pursue a project for academic credit
-participate in free classes and events
-teach a class
Contact us at gardening@utenvironment.org for more info!
Feel free to join our community garden facebook group
Ornamental Gardens
We maintain four ornamental gardens on campus. These gardens are proposed, designed, implemented, and maintained by UT students.
If you or your student organization would like to "adopt" one of our ornamental gardens for a semester, please let us know! Responsibilities would include planting, watering, weeding, and general maintenance. Your adoption would be recognized on our online platforms as well as at the garden itself. If interested, please email us at gardening@utenvironment.org.
Click on the map for a larger image!
Native Plant Garden
Our native plant garden is located on the northeast corner of the CS5 building, near Waller Creek (map). We built the garden in 2008 on a severely eroded site with the financial support of Keep Austin Beautiful and Austin Green Art. The terraced garden includes many native Texas plants, including red yucca, inland sea oats, American beautyberry, Turk's cap, pigeonberry, chile pequin, dwarf palmetto, fall asters, fall obedience plants, salvia, cedar sage, Texas betony, and a dogwood tree.
As this garden is filled entirely with native plants, we let nature take care of it (i.e., we don't ever water it, as the plants are well-adapted and self-sufficient). We periodically will weed the garden, and we plan to soon pour recycled tumbled glass mulch to remediate another eroded area.
Special thanks to Jim Lozier of FM 973 Pit Materials for donating rocks and concrete for the terraces, and Carl Schumacher of Schumacher's Nursery for donating plants!
HRC Planters
The planters located on the south side of the Harry Ransom Center (map) were planted and are maintained by our gardening committee. A colorful mixture of succulents, herbs, and native Texas plants populate the planters.
Andrews Residence Hall landscaping project
In the Spring of 2010 we installed a landscaping project on the south side of Andrews Residence Hall (map). We planted Belinda's Dream roses, rosemary, American beautyberry, a variety of lavender and oregano, lamb's ear, irises, and rue in a high foot-traffic area of campus. This seasonal, colorful, peaceful garden was designed by a UT Landscape Architecture student, and implemented by volunteers.
UA9 Garden
The gardening committee transformed this bare plot into a green oasis in the courtyard of the UA9 building in Fall 2009 (map). The plants are a variety of native Texas and well-adapted plants, including Mexican heather, Mexican feathergrass, yellow Lantana, several varieties of salvia, gaura, and batface cuphea.
For more pictures of our campus gardens, please visit our BLOG
Longhorn ReLeaf Tree Plantings
Every semester, the gardening committee works with UT's Urban Forester to organize tree plantings. We generally have a tree planting every year during the fall, and during Earth Week in April. The gardening committee has planted over 50 trees on UT campus in the past 2 years through Longhorn ReLeaf!