UBC’s lush campus is home to approximately 8,000 planted trees and over 10,000 native trees. You’d think this would be enough greenery for the student body… but for some, it will never be enough.
In a budding student-led campus greenification initiative, a troupe of anonymous UBC students have taken it upon themselves to bring even more vegetation to campus.
“Things are green here, but they aren’t green enough,” said the initiative’s head gardener in an email statement to The Ubyssey.
“It’s easy when you walk around campus to see where there’s no vegetation where there should be tons.”
Their approach to greenifying campus? The small team is starting with efforts to increase the amount of moss on campus. But, true to the innovative UBC student form, this team isn’t using real live plants to greenify campus.
They’re using turf.
“We were inspired by MacInnes Field,” said the head gardener of the project. “Really inspired. We spent all our time there from September to December. I never even went to class. So that’s when the seed was planted for this project, so to speak.”
The team held daily Zoom conferences to deliberate if turf would be able to “pass” as moss. Ultimately, they decided that it would.
“Turf is great ’cause it looks kinda not really real, except all students have eye damage from staring at screens in this online, hybrid school era, so they can’t tell that it’s not real moss.”
Emphasizing the environmentally-conscious nature of this, ahem, nature project, the project’s website explains, “We use turf because it is easy for us to source from spots around campus (such as the naturally-occurring and replenishing turf at MacInnes Field). We promise to only take a little square once in a while as we do the good work of brightening up our campus.”
The team was pressed to explain the efficacy of their methods — why, for example, would you use fake plants instead of real plants to greenify campus? The team stressed that their goal is clear: to naturalize public spaces through “any greens necessary.”
The team also emphasized that they are mindful of the potential ramifications their work could have for other student-led initiatives on campus, as they’ve co-opted a role traditionally belonging to university administration without any conversation or warning.
“As UBC says, Tuum Est — It is yours. And who are they talking to? Students, we think. As students, we are talking back to this university via greenery cause it’s OURS. With every patch of moss hammered onto a tree, we are saying: this campus is mine, and I will put green where I want it, not where you and all your gardeners determine.”
While their campaign has revolutionary messaging, the greenification initiative team says they don’t want anarchy on campus — just some budding student interventions within the institution.
So far, the team has only added turf to one tree on campus, Northeast of Martha Piper fountain off Main Mall, but they promise it won’t be the last.
The Dingbat is The Ubyssey’s humour section. You can send pitches or completed pieces to blog@ubyssey.ca.