Christian Kragh Jespersen 

Christian Kragh Jespersen for Garden Coordinator

I am an Astrophysics G4 who has lived at Lakeside for two and a half years. I have been a part of the Garden for two years and Garden coordinator for one, which I have really enjoyed. I have been passionate about gardening for my entire life, having grown up with a family tradition of having homegrown produce and flowers around. I know that gardens and gardening bring all of us peace in an otherwise stressful student experience and the Garden has been an important part of my springs, summers and falls for the time I have spent at Lakeside. I really enjoy growing flowers, tomatoes, zucchini, broccoli, cucumbers, herbs, and my favourite, peas. I want to contribute as much as possible to the Garden running smoothly so that we can all reap the benefits of such an important community space. 

Being the garden coordinator already, I have a few things that would be good to improve on for next year. First of all, the community plot will be shrunk to half the size it was this year. The usage of the community plot is too low, and we have generally been oversubscribed for personal plot space, so this change will help with both issues! Things that I would like to continue are the fall planting/seeding that we did this year (the NJ climate allows us to do multiple harvests per year!), the early seeding events, the cleaning party (with free pizza!), and the trellis-building event. Hopefully we can add even more community events next year! Throughout the growing season, I have been working on a little knowledge base for how to grow the most popular crops for beginner gardeners, and I’ll be excited to share it with my co-gardeners next year. 

All the best,

Christian