Around the world there are millions of people who celebrate Earth Day. Here at EvCC, students had the day to celebrate Earth Day with the Leaf With a Plant event, which took place in Whitehorse Hall on April 23.
Leaf With a Plant brought the EvCC community together, gathering around the plants available to take home.
Dennis Ryan, a former graphic designer professor here at EvCC, started this event 25 years ago. The biggest Earth Day event was back in 2018 with around 400 students, staff and neighbors.
This year’s event was announced everywhere on the school campus, on flyers, through Canvas notifications and emails, proclaiming “Free plants!” to anyone interested.
This year, Ryan and his team organized the event in Whitehorse Hall. Therefore, students could come in and participate in the event before or after class.
Hermela Shiferaw, an EvCC student, said, “Groceries are expensive, and you know, there is an agency and being able to grow your own garden. I was happy to see the diverse options that were available, including the apples and tomatoes and the white strawberries, as well as the indoor plants and flowers.”
“I’m very into self-sustainability and finding different ways to kind of incorporate that into my life, and gardening was one of those things,” Shiferaw said.
Megan Crossland saw the Canvas notification and wanted to stop by and take a few plants home.
“When I was really little my mom and I went to Costco. We went into the flower plant section, and I scooped out the little lead that had fallen off, and it was dead.”
“My mom was like ‘No, no, no, no. Like throw that away.’ You don’t need that. Go put that down. I did not listen to her,” she said.
“I took that little start home, and put it in some water and grew roots and right now, we have a beautiful plant that it grew from, and that is kind of how I started my plant journey,” Crossland said. “And now at home, I have tons of grow lights, I have tons of plants that I’ve potted and everything, and so, yeah, I’m very passionate about plants.”
Dylan Gyor, a WSU student visiting EvCC, stopped by and picked up a white strawberry plant.
“I was asking someone about the strawberries because I saw that they’re white strawberries, and I want to see if they actually grow as white strawberries,” Gyor said. “It turns out that they do, which is cool.”
When a white strawberry is fully ripe, it turns pale pink.
Gyor left with eight pots of plants for himself. However, he later went back to get another plant for someone else, leaving the event with nine different plants.
Throughout the years, Ryan, his wife and other faculty staff took their time off to help keep this tradition moving to continue celebrating the importance of Earth Day.
“My wife likes to do spreadsheets, and she was calculating it and I remember that 2018 was the biggest year we had doing this.”
“I remember from that, we almost had 400 students, faculty, staff and neighbors because it’s open to absolutely everyone,” Ryan said.
EvCC student Violet Cookstonq said, “Yeah, I think it’s a cool way to refresh your home, I mean, that’s why I got house plants and stuff. So it’s nice to have … something green in your home when everything kind of seems bland, and watching it grow is really, you know, cool to see too.”
This year, Dennis Ryan and his team started the event earlier than before. They were up by 10 a.m. and said “we aren’t leaving until it starts to slow down.” They plan to continue the Leaf With a Plant tradition next year.
“I feel like it’s super important to try to preserve native species and plants and animals,” Gyor said.
“It’s kinda what makes the planet interesting and it gets a little bit more boring every time something goes extinct. So it’ll be nice to have a day to remember how important it is to preserve that kind of stuff.”
EvCC will continue celebrating Earth day by organizing this event for years to come. So don’t hesitate in stopping by next year and taking home a plant or two — maybe even nine.
