Developing the Toolkit

Over the first two years of the internship, we accumulated a multitude of resources, materials, and research related to our work on environmental sustainability, cultural diversity, and social justice. Leaders and interns decided to develop a mobile collection of these objects and stories - the UIC Heritage Garden Toolkit.

One of the cornerstones of our toolkit was the creation and inclusion of the Seed Library. One side of our Toolkit consists of a treasure box full of seeds collected from the gardens around the globe. The interns have researched and compiled fact sheets on planting, harvesting, preserving, and maintaining gardens. Additionally, in each seed bag we created readily distributable seed cards with growing and harvesting information for each plant variety. The UIC Heritage Garden Toolkit travels with us to various public programs around UIC, the local community, and greater Chicago area.