Flower Power

Pink muhly grass is an unique plant, often described as regal. The pinkish-red blossoms wave to passersby in the autumn breeze as they walk through McGinty Mall, also known as the agriculture quad, on Clemson’s campus. The Sustainable Landscape Demonstration Garden Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. Ellen Vincent from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, is responsible for this beautiful display of color. Vincent teaches her team two valuable lessons: how to incorporate sustainable greenery into Clemson’s green spaces and the value of native plants in gardens.

Vincent’s research focuses on the therapeutic and sustainable potential of gardens and natural spaces. She mentors the Creative Inquiry team on designing, building and maintaining such spaces while also assessing how these gardens impact passersby. The students not only maintain the gardens but deploy surveys to students and faculty on their comfort and understanding of the natural world. Since the garden’s installation in 2012, survey participants report an increase in aesthetic pleasure and feelings of safety in the area. More than 30% of survey participants felt they had learned something from the landscape just by walking through.

The demonstration garden in the agriculture quad inspired several additional greenspaces on Clemson’s campus and fueled a new-found passion within the Clemson community for plant sustainability. “It’s extremely important to expose people to sustainable landscape design. It increases and capacitates ecosystems and brings back that natural environment from before we stepped in,” Mary Claire Zimmerman, a senior architecture major, said. By learning about how to care for and maintain South Carolina’s native plants, students are contributing to the health of the ecosystem as well as enhancing natural beauty.

In the coming years, the Sustainable Landscape Demonstration Garden Creative Inquiry team plans to install gardens in the empty mulch beds around the Academic Success Center. Incorporating native life into the campus’s educational and professional spaces grows a respect for nature and, through that respect, makes Clemson University a better place for people and vegetation alike.