I’ll say one thing about Columbia University: it definitely keeps in contact with its grads. I get an endless stream of brochures, emails – even phone calls from this institution. Recently, I received a publication dated “Spring/Summer 2021 that had a heart-warming piece about a radiology professor and his garden that’s (get this) smack in the middle “of a brick-and-limestone urban campus.” This eye-opener by Paul Hond is one of the most interesting pieces I’ve read in recent months.

“I WAS BORN TO BE A FARMER,” says Tommy Vaughan, as he surveys his modest L-shaped plot – just steps away from his office in the Shapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research – that has long served as an ad hoc student-run garden. But last spring, after the pandemic hit and the weeds took over Vaughan decided to roll up his sleeves and start digging.

After obtaining official permission he planted seeds for a small field of vegetables. Since then he has raised carrots, corn, beets, turnips, onions, squash, beans, peppers, kale, broccoli and cucumbers. He finally realized that he was returning to his roots in Alabama. He named the plot the George Washington Carver Victory Garden, after America’s most famous agricultural scientist.

“IN THE 1930s WE HAD THE GREAT Depression, the Dust Bowl and the depletion of the soil due to decades of intensive cotton farming,” says the professor. “Carver promoted new crops – such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, that not only could be grown on the depleted soil but could also restore it.”

Vaughan’s grandmother taught him how to plant vegetables when he was six-years-old. He learned the right way to do this because it was in accordance with Carver’s principles of crop rotation and self-sufficiency.

Carver’s legacy also lives in the phrase “victory gardens” – which began as “war gardens.” At the time of Carver’s death in 1943 (when he was then an advisor to presidents and politicians) and at the height of another war – Americans, facing rationing again, had planted millions of victory gardens.

“TODAY, CHILDREN TELL THEIR PARENTS that they want to visit our garden,” says Vaughan. “We label the rows, so they can get to know all the names of the vegetables. And whenever I’m out there weeding and watering, I assume the role of garden interpreter,” says Vaughan. “The kids are a wonderful audience.”

Vaughan holds posts at Columbia Engineering, CUIMC and Zukerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. The eight to ten hours doing “nice tedious laborious work” provides respite from the lab and the classroom. It also draws him back to the basics of life.

“IT’S HUGE THERAPY FOR ME TO DIG IN the dirt, plant things and watch them grow,” he says. “It also brings together two parts of my life. One, by honoring George Washington Carver and two, by connecting rural Alabama to a campus in the heart of Manhattan.”

CLICK HERE to read our blog titled, “What’s Happening in Alabama?” You may be in for a surprise!

WHY RATHBONE MANSIONS? It takes roughly five hours to drive from Alabama to New Orleans and 19 hours to drive from New York to New Orleans. Do you think that’s a lot? Not so, I’ve driven from New York to California and that’s 10 states + umpteen hours. Come for a visit – no matter how far you drive, you’ll have a great time when you get here. That’s a promise. 

Shaun Nelson-Henrick