Green thumbs, community members and students visited the opening day of Weber State University Davis Campus’s greenhouse and garden on June 14 to enjoy garden therapy and purchase fresh produce.

After the popularity of last year’s winter plant sale, nutrition professor and garden coordinator Joan Thompson decided to open the garden and greenhouse to members of the community this summer.

“There were so many people that came to the plant sale last winter that wanted a chance to come out and be in the garden,” Thompson said, “so we decided to have open garden hours to see what would happen.”

Collaboration between the nutrition and botany departments at the Davis Campus funded the construction of the greenhouse. It grows fresh produce, herbs and perennials and maintains a supply of organic honey that is harvested from the garden’s own beehive.

Much of the produce is made available to the nutrition department’s cooking classes, where they focus on plant based recipes which support environmental sustainability. The leftover produce is sold to the community to raise funds for the greenhouse, according to greenhouse manager Monica Sellers.

“Once the nutrition lab has its food to run the cooking class, there’s no reason we can’t sell the remainder,” said Sellers, “It’s going to be something manageable for college students”.

Sellers said the garden is completely sustainable. It reduces waste and saves money by focusing on recycling products and using a drip irrigation system to conserve water.

“We like the garden to be sustainable, because it’s a sustainable cooking class. Sustainable means that we don’t have to find the resources to run it… we try to reuse as much as we can,” Sellers said.

The garden will maintain open hours every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m. throughout the summer. Fresh ingredients will be ready for harvest towards the end of July.