Faculty and students of City College’s environmental horticulture department are constructing a garden shed situated in the campus’s landscape gardens overlooking the Santa Barbara harbor.

In addition to being a public space for both City College faculty and students and Santa Barbara residents in general, the shed is meant to be a demonstration of the advantages of construction using sustainable and environmentally friendly building materials and methods.

“The most fun thing about these kinds of projects is the communal effort,” said Dr. Michael Gonella, chair of the environmental horticulture department. “It brings together large groups of people over time. It’s a community effort that anyone can do”.

The planned completion of the project is set for the middle of next spring semester and is estimated to cost $200 to $300.

Aside from a few wood support beams used for the frame and a prospective tin roof, it is to be built as an earthen structure made almost entirely from natural and locally grown materials, primarily clay and straw. The shed is inspired by Native American and Australian Aboriginal dwellings, which were constructed from organic materials.

“Supplies from local, native land, anything from sand, silt, clay, and [straw], which acts as a fibrous material holding together the tensile strength” are the shed’s components, said laboratory teaching assistant Drew Wolter.

The shed’s natural materials and structure will provide side-benefits of earthquake-resistance and heat moderation, which will demonstrate the sustainability of an organically assembled edifice.

Wolter said this will challenge, “the taboo that has been formed in this industry and this culture that something that is earthen, organic, or from your native land is not going to be safe.”

The use of locally derived supplies will reduce the construction’s carbon footprint. The clay-straw amalgamation is made on-site and mixed together with hand and foot by work teams formed in groups.

The environmental horticulture department is applying for certification from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration so the garden’s fruits and vegetables can be stored and distributed from the shed for the benefit of City College students and faculty and the Santa Barbara community.

Gonella spearheaded the project and noted that sustainable projects such as this are relatively easy to put together and repair.

“One of the neat things about these kinds of sustainable structures is that it’s low maintenance,” he said. “The lay person can just patch a wall…or place a hole for a window in really easily.”

The department’s Permaculture Design course – EH 109 initiated the construction, although the City College Student Sustainability Coalition has also contributed to it in the past.