Education

I graduated from Middlebury College quite a few years ago. It's not where I learned to garden, but it's where I learned to care about our environment. I bundled newspapers (the Middlebury Campus, known affectionately on April Fool's Day as the Middlebury Compost) for recycling and turned out the lights during the black-out concert.

The school has come a long way since then. For at least the past ten years, recycling bins have sprouted everywhere, for paper, plastic and glass. Five or six years ago, the college began sponsoring an organic garden that provides the foundation for both nutrition (the harvest is used in the dining halls) and education (students and faculty undertake studies based in the garden).

While it's frustrating to think how much we could have done if we'd started taking these steps back when I was a student, at least we're on the right path now. As one intern at the Middlebury garden wrote, "if there’s anything I’ve learned from gardening it’s that change takes time and you must be open to collaboration and innovation."