Essential to the environmental culture of the Kalamazoo College campus are the green spaces found here – especially the Hoop House garden, located behind the Fitness & Wellness Center.

The Hoop House, whose funding and construction was almost entirely student-led, has been carefully developed into a beautiful garden and growing space; two students took advantage of that fact in the summer of 2022.

Maeve Crothers ’23 and Nora Blanchard ’23 are both fellows through the Larry J. Bell ’80 Center for Environmental Stewardship, and completed projects in the Hoop House this summer.

Crothers joined an existing effort to develop a stable tomato variety, while Blanchard cultivated corn indigenous to the Wixárika community in Mexico, which was gifted to Critical Ethnic Studies professor Cyndy Garcia-Weyandt.

To learn more about this seed stewardship and the importance of the Hoop House and its community, click here.