SEED-ing the Future

This weekend, assembly began on a shed that will be the first cornerstone in the growing Magnolia-Sycamore Community Vegetable Garden.
Led by Clemson architecture professor David Pastre, who teaches classes downtown at the Charleston Architecture Center, students and volunteers took shed pieces constructed off-site and began bolting them together on a slab poured last week along a piece of land fronting Magnolia Road.
Funded in part by local greenway money and a grant from mega-hardware giant Lowe’s, the garden is a project being led by the Charleston Parks Conservancy.
The conservancy purchased the land behind the former elementary school at the corner of Sycamore and Magnolia, with the hopes of transforming into a horticultural center, then deeding it to the City of Charleston as a park.
With only a $10,000 budget, Pastre and his students designed, built and are now constructing a dual purpose shed-pavilion, that will not only provide shade and a future home for a farmer’s market, but also create storage for tools used on maintaining the private and community garden beds that will soon dot the land.
Pastre said the shed’s total size will grow to 600 square feet, as covered trellises will allow the structure to stretch past the poured concrete. He said by employing a “staggered shingle effect,“ the pavilion part of the shed will allow for plenty of airflow – important come the muggy summer months in West Ashley.
Borrowing on older, traditional construction techniques, the shed itself will be a fairly simple structure, built from treated lumber – four-by-fours and two-by-sixes combined together for more structural rigidity.
Pastre said he would have “loved” to have had access to the heart of pine wood rumored to be in the base of the nearby Limehouse Produce vegetable shed that is being torn down. “That would have been great,” he said, grateful for the donated wood and roofing products from Southern Lumber.
Pastre, whose students put together a master plan for the garden and its future expansions, said that a key element to the shed is that it could be taken down and moved.
“It may sound corny, but you’ve heard of LEED certified buildings,” Pastre said, referring to a national green building standard. “Well, this shed is designed to be SEED-certified, or Social Economic Environmental Design certified.”
Fitting, considering the number of planting boxes slated to be included in the garden continues to blossom, with 16 larger “shared responsibility” gardening beds now on the drawing board, along with 48 smaller beds that can be leased by local individuals for sustainable growth.
The shared beds will send its produce to local food banks and will be sold at an onsite farmer’s market to help cover costs. Pastre said that the number of beds up for lease could jump to as high as 7o by next summer.
The shed and the beds will only take up a small portion of the land, on Pastre’s plans, opening up the possibility of the conservancy finding a permanent home on the oak-littered site.