Published Author Category Community

Calling all RTPers with green thumbs!

This Friday (10/17) we welcome you to come help us finish planting our garden as your grab lunch at our weekly Food Truck Rodeo. We’re about halfway there, but would love it if anyone with any interest would help us finish our small plot at 800 Park Offices Drive!

We’ve installed a garden at 800 Park Offices Drive, and we need your help to keep it thriving. We know out of the 40,000 employees in RTP, surely some of you would love the opportunity to plant kale or garlic while on lunch break or for an hour after work in order to outsmart traffic. Gardens are popping up all over the place, especially in unexpected places: downtowns, rooftops, sides of buildings. After noticing the abundance of green space here in the Park that lies fallow, we seized the opportunity to make a garden. Why not?

As a start, we have installed four beds outside of the 800 Building. We know it’s not very much space, but we are trying to squeeze in a little fall garden while we still are able, with the hopes of having a larger spring garden. Our goal is to maintain the garden each Friday during our Food Truck Rodeos. You will be able to come grab a bite to eat and get your hands dirty. Once items start growing, the bounty will be split among those that helped to grow it!

To get things moving, we called on Bountiful Backyards from Durham to come put in a few beds. They came and helped us locate a sunny spot for the garden. Then they worked to condition our soil, installed some beds, and laid wood chips, all while leaving a spot for a couple of picnic tables. (Tell me those won’t be the prime seats during the Food Truck Rodeos!)

At the 800 Building we are working to create a third space – not home, not work, but the third place you spend time. As we begin taking steps toward this concept, we are trying to create activities that will foster community here in the Research Triangle Park. In the same space we have started hosting happy hours, food truck rodeos – both breakfast and lunch – and there are more to come!

We are changing how we do things in the Park: this is no longer your father’s RTP.