This blog’s purpose is to communicate the progress of the design and development of new collapsible vertical gardens as a part of Ray Cam Cooperative Community Centre’s Home Grown Wall project. Ray-Cam is a non-profit organization that encourages people to use their individual strengths to help benefit their community as a whole. Their community centre located on E Hastings St. in Vancouver runs a wide range of projects and programs dedicated to helping improve the quality of life for people living in the area. One such program is the Home Grown Wall project.

The Home Grown Wall project was created due to the success Ray-Cam had with its Food Wall Demonstration, which produced a substantial amount of vegetables that had been grown using vertical gardens that were secured to the side of an exterior wall. Ray-Cam used the harvested food to help contribute to their childcare lunch program as well as providing food to families and other individuals in the community. Because of the success of this demonstration, Ray-Cam has decided to launch the Home Grown Wall project which has the goal of manufacturing one hundred smaller vertical gardens that can be used on balconies and in smaller yards. Ray-Cam then hopes to distribute these smaller gardens to people in the community to provide them with a sustainable food source and to continue to use them to provide for their childcare lunch program.

As a part of this program, Ray-Cam has asked a group of UBC Civil Engineering students to assist in the design and construction of a prototype for these small vertical gardens. As a result, the Home Grown Wall project is one of this year’s Civil 202 CBEL projects. CBEL, or Community-Based Experiential Learning, are community based projects aimed to provide students with hands on experience while providing technical help for non-profit community projects and initiatives. These projects are run as part of the Civil 202 course offered at UBC. Each project has been assigned a team of second year civil engineering students who are to assist with various aspects of the project including data collection and analysis, design, and in some cases construction and development. Throughout the duration of the term, each team of students will be in communication with both the organization they are involved with as well as a UBC Graduate student who will mentor them during the project.

For the Home Grown Wall project, UBC has provided Ray-Cam with a team of 6 students to help with the design and possible construction of a prototype that Ray-Cam will be able to use to help manufacture one hundred vertical gardens. The team members are as follows:

Mandy Tam was born in Vancouver and is in charge of communicating and organizing site visits and meetings with Ray-Cam for this project. She looks forward to working with the community center to provide the Lunch Program at Ray-Cam with fresh vegetables.

Meghan Grant is from Courtenay on Vancouver Island. She will be in charge of communicating with the team’s mentor and organizing and scheduling meetings between the team and the mentor.

Danny Hsieh is from Vancouver. He will be one of the two main people in charge of the design process and ensuring that the designs are completed thoroughly and on time.

Parinaz Shahmoradi is from Iran and she is responsible for the team’s scheduling. She will be keeping track of all important dates and deadlines and is responsible for informing the rest of the group of any upcoming deadlines.

Thomas Van Wermeskerken is from Langley and he is responsible for taking minutes at all team meetings. He is also one of the two main people in charge of the project design.

Thomas Bekenn is from Steveston and he is in charge of completing the team’s blog throughout the term. He will be updating the blog throughout the term with photos from site visits and updates on the progress of the project.

A photo of the student CBEL team.