Welcome to the Mississippi State University Community Garden!
The Community Garden is a cross-campus collaboration between three academic departments, two administrative units and three student organizations. Each partner, has a representative on the garden committee, which oversees all operations in the garden.
Garden Partners
Student Organizations:
- MSU Student Association
- MSU Graduate Student Association
- Students for Sustainable Campus
Academic Units:
- Department of Landscape Architecture
- Department of Plant and Soil Sciences
- Department of Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion
Administrative Units:
- Office of Planning Design and Construction Administration
- Department of Health Promotion and Wellness
The garden is a resource for all MSU students and staff and is open to anyone interested in growing healthy food. The garden has many unique growing technologies that make it a regional resource for small-scale urban agriculture.
- The garden has 8, accessible planters and 17, large raised planters.
- All of the accessible planters and 4 of the large planters have sub-surface irrigation systems that water plants from below and reduce loss of water from evaporation.
- All of the large beds planters have automated and wirelessly controlled irrigation controls that allow each bed to watered to the user’s unique requirements.
- The garden has two autonomous farming robots or “Farmbots” that maintain their own 5’x10’ bed.
- Two, 2,000 gallon cisterns harvest rainwater and condensate from a nearby AC unit. This free water offsets most of the garden’s needs through the year.
- Compost is collected from dining halls and campus landscape to provide nutrients back in the garden.
Our Mission
The MSU Community Garden mission is to strengthen the MSU community, research regional issues related to urban agriculture, and extend knowledge to cities and towns throughout the state to help promote a healthier Mississippi.
The garden’s primary functions are to:
- create a space for students and staff to grow healthy food on campus,
- serve as an outdoor laboratory for sustainable/healthy food courses on campus, and
- provide a platform for research endeavors that would stretch across the university.
Find out more about how you can get involved in the garden. Get Involved.
Location
Mississippi State University is physically located adjacent to the city of Starkville, Mississippi in the northeastern section of the state.
The MSU Community Garden is located off of Stone Blvd. behind the MAFES store and MSU Dairy Plant. The easiest way to find the garden is to look at the MSU Campus Map. The garden’s north entry, south of Newell-Grissom, provides ample parking for visitors, while the east entry, at the Pilot Food Processing Building provides assessable parking and walks to the garden.
More Information
For more information, or to schedule a tour of the garden, please see our contact page.
