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Three years ago, a group of students at ����ԭ�� planted native wildflower seeds in starter trays with care, intention and optimism.

Only grass sprouted.

That wasn’t the beginning of the SEES garden they hoped for, but they persisted.

On April 22, 2026, the students of SEES — Students for Earth and Environmental Sustainability — welcomed a new pollinator garden to campus. It’s populated with native flowers, a petrified log and rock path, a few Adirondack chairs for comfortable studying, and an oak tree fully invested in providing future shade.

The site is between the Russ Engineering Center and the Student Union, and it was formerly home to a community vegetable garden. But the wooden beds had rotted and the brackets rusted. It became, in the diplomatic phrasing of faculty advisor Stacey Hundley, Ph.D., “a campus eyesore.” However, the students in SEES saw potential. They hauled everything away and began making plans.

Then the formal approval process began.

“Lots of patience,” was one thing that Kenny Reinhard ’26, president of SEES, said he’d learned during the three-year process as he was spreading river rock for the walkway as the garden neared completion. The graduating senior earth and environmental science major might have also said persistence.

Nobody quit, and that matters. Because showing up and doing the hard work at ����ԭ�� aren’t abstracts — they’re a weekday. Raiders get things done.

Members donated seeds from their own yards, and they donated their talent. Anna Quick ’25, used the GIS certificate she earned at ����ԭ�� to map and design the entire garden layout — applied learning that was literally planted in the ground. And when J.T. Bukiewicz from the grounds staff was able to get involved during Spring Semester, the whole thing sprang forward fast.

On Earth Day 2026, they cut the ribbon.

The space is seeded with drought-resistant plants — milkweed, coneflower, decorative grasses — all designed to draw in butterflies and bees while giving students a reason to sit and study outside for a while. A fossil exchange box is coming too.

“We’ll be adding fossils that we collected from Oakes Quarry Park to add a geologic feature to the garden,” said Reinhard, noting that one of the garden’s sponsors is the American Institute for Professional Geologists.

He explained that it’s kind of like a little free library that you see in people’s yards. And the large section of petrified wood was moved from behind Brehm Hall to be a showcase in the space.

For the most part, the students took the challenges in stride.

“Earth Day is every day,” said Gabrielle Crossman ’26, a graduating senior and SEES officer. “So even if something is destroyed, we just rebuild it again. That’s kind of the philosophy of environmentalism.”

A lot of the students who started this project have graduated. And this garden is their gift back to current and future Raiders. It’s grounded in belonging, and it’s filled with purpose and hope for a shared future.