Instructor: Suzanne Morse

The black flies are just beginning to bite as a half-dozen students kneel beside freshly dug beds in COA's community garden to plant the vegetable seedlings they've grown in Suzanne Morse's Gardens and Greenhouses class. Their plots of tomatoes, kale, chard and other vegetables represent a vital link in the local food chain. The harvest will supply the Bar Harbor Food Pantry with fresh produce.

From the basics of seed starting to issues of food security, Morse's class covers a broad swath of ground where horticulture meets ethics, philosophy and other disciplines. Students "learn to think like a plant" as they study soil fertility, pest control, garden plant ecology and other principles of organic gardening. At the same time, they explore such questions as where their food comes from and what organic really means.  "I think food is a good way to force people to be interdisciplinary," Morse says.

Books including People With Dirty Hands and A Patch of Eden inspire classroom discussions. Students get their own hands dirty by collaborating on a garden design for a client like the food pantry and by each creating a five-year plan for a garden of their own design. They have designed everything from a rooftop garden in Asia to a family vegetable plot.

Wherever they sink their own roots in the world, students carry with them a solid understanding of organic gardening and an ability to ask the kinds of questions essential to creating a sustainable and healthy food supply. Some former students now farm locally, while others are working on community gardens in the inner city and overseas.

"A love of life is part of this too," says Morse, whose class celebrated the end of the spring semester with a feast. Along with encouraging students' passions for their work, Morse aims to help them develop a broader perspective. She says narrowly focused science training no longer adequately prepares students to help solve the world's problems. "We need people who have a better sense of ecology and what's happening as the world changes," she says. "And human ecology pushes you to look for a diverse array of answers."

Course Readings