Xanaa Myers, a third-year agriculture education student, hands out free succulent plants and care instructions in front of the Aggie Source Pantry Rack during the GrowChella festival.
If North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students can’t go to the University Farm, well then, the farm will come to them — in a manner of speaking.
Four raised garden beds – a pizza bed, a pollinator bed, a tea bed and a salad bed – are planted and growing outside of the Aggie Source Food Pantry at 205 Nocho St., Suite 115. The pantry provides food for students who face short-term food insecurity.
Seeds were planted in the raised beds on April 22 — at the Earth Day GrowChella celebration — and the resulting plants will provide fresh food and herbs for students, as well as flowers for pollinators.
“Students can see the food as it grows,” said Aggie Source coordinator Sherelle Wofford.
The idea of installing the raised beds came from students who participate in Farm Fridays, Wofford said. Farm Fridays is an initiative where students volunteer to maintain four raised beds at the University Farm, 3020 McConnell Road.
Produce planted in these raised beds will eventually help feed N.C. A&T students through the Aggie Source Pantry Rack. A ribbon-cutting for the beds was held during the GrowChella festival on April 22, 2025, which was also Earth Day.
Farm Fridays is coordinated through Aggie Source, which also receives produce from the University Farm beds. The program is open to all students, said Morgan Malone, urban agriculture and community gardens coordinator at Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T.
“For students who aren’t able to make it out to the farm, this kind of brings the farm to them,” Malone said.
“This is something we’ve been working really hard on for the past six months,” rising senior Kendall Taylor said at the GrowChella event. GrowChella, a play on Coachella — the California arts and music festival — also featured food trucks, plant giveaways, music and information tables from university and community organizations.
Taylor, an environmental studies student in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, said she wants to focus on sustainability and environmental justice in her studies.
“What I hope to come about from this is not only produce for our students in our community, but also an awareness for agriculture and sustainability and how important it is in each of our everyday lives,” Taylor said. “This is something we want to help improve the university for years to come.”
The individual raised beds’ themes make the project more fun and show students how to use what’s growing inside, the students say.
“We’re really excited and just looking forward to how it can contribute to the Aggie Community,” Wofford said.
“I love combating food insecurity, especially with Black people,” said Kaitlyn Parker, a rising junior studying multimedia journalism and political science. “That’s a really big issue here in Greensboro, since we live in a food desert. We just want to make sure that our students have access to healthy and fresh foods.”
