VitenEnga
VitenEnga is a garden area on Campus Ås that is both a school garden, an exhibition space and produces food for our café. A 3-acre (3,000 square meters!) learning arena that is open to everyone, - around the clock! Here you can see or take part in sustainability in practice.
We collaborate with several of our neighbors on Campus Ås on both teaching, dissemination and research in this green classroom, in addition to actors in the business community. For example, in the spring of 2025, we will conduct experiments with biochar in VitenEnga in collaboration with Down to Earth .
School garden
This green classroom is getting more and more attention, and rightly so. Although the history of school gardens in Norway is well over 100 years old and has been somewhat neglected, this learning arena fits perfectly into today's curriculum. Here, students can receive education for sustainable development, connect with nature, each other and the surrounding society. If we are to equip the new generations for the challenges of tomorrow, the school garden has a unique role.
In the school garden, students gain practical experience and concrete solutions that motivate them to make the green shift. Here we can work with the various subjects in school, but it is also an excellent arena for interdisciplinary projects. It encompasses all three interdisciplinary themes in the curriculum, public health and life skills, democracy and citizenship, and sustainable development. White Paper 34 , which advocates for a more practical school, to meet many of the challenges it currently faces, also promotes the school garden as a good example of one of the solutions. We too. Vitenparken has worked with school gardens for many years and has a close collaboration with NMBU on continuing education courses with teachers from both schools and kindergartens. In addition, we work with local schools and other educational and research institutions. For 5 years, the national school garden seminar has been arranged with us in collaboration with Organic Norway and their fantastic school garden project “Cultivate the future!” .
We have also initiated a project on a network for folk research in school gardens and urban agriculture. Read more here.
You can read more about the school garden as a learning arena and find resources for teaching, among other things, on our website about the school garden.
Book a school visit or teacher training course in VitenEnga here.
Kitchen garden
In addition to being a sustainable arena for learning, we also produce food at VitenEnga. Some is used in courses and school garden teaching, but most of what is grown here is harvested for our kitchen at Andedammen café, which uses it in creative and traditional ways in its menu year-round.
Over half of the area in VitenEnga is laid out according to market garden principles where we grow more of the larger crops, such as onions, lettuce, cabbage and root vegetables. Here we grow small-scale according to principles for what we believe is the agriculture of the future. We are inspired by agroecology where the farm is viewed through ecological lenses and the entire food system as an exciting field for sustainable development. We want to highlight the importance of local cycles and resilience and look to both organic and regenerative cultivation methods for inspiration.
Technology is exciting and necessary to achieve smart solutions in tomorrow's food systems, but we also have a strong focus on the social dimension of food production. Here we meet many people over the course of a year. Both through what we communicate, but also through what they taste!
Read more about our kitchen and their connection to VitenEnga in this interview with chef Willy-Jann Alegria Johansen.
