There's going to be a food forest at the top of Hunnicutt Creek, and you can help plant it.
On a hillside off Newman Road on East Campus, Clemson students grow figs, plums and herbs, are planting a Piedmont prairie, and shape the ground so rain soaks in instead of running off. Anyone can come. Most Sundays someone will hand you gloves and something alive to put in the ground.
Your first workday is the easy part.
No dues, no experience, no commitment. Wear shoes you don't mind getting muddy.
Stewardship Sundays
Show up at the food forest, grab gloves, and we'll put you to work planting, mulching or building.
Cultivate Clemson
Our open festival at the food forest, with growers and partners from around the Upstate. A good first visit if you'd rather look around before you dig.
Where: East Campus near Kite Hill, off Newman Road, at the very top of Hunnicutt Creek. Open in a map app (approximate)
What's growing up there
Every plant has to earn its place twice: native, edible, medicinal or good for pollinators, and useful to the soil or the water.
Figs and black-eyed Susans
A fig ringed with Susans, and a fig propagation workshop to share cuttings.
The brick herb spiral
Rosemary on top of a brick spiral: several small growing climates in one build.
Plum and mulberry
A Chickasaw plum, an early spring food source for pollinators, and a red mulberry.
The first orchard
Blueberries, raspberries and a grapevine from a Lowe's donation in spring 2025, plus maypop in the vine layer.
We've seen firsthand how a degraded water system can zap the life out of a place, and how a healthy one lets biodiversity flourish. We're trying to be the positive feedback loop of biodiversity at Clemson.
Living soil holds water. Held water feeds more life, and more life holds more water. So the next round of work up there is about water: two rain gardens, a dry river-rock bed, hugel swales and a half-moon basin that catch rain on the slope and let it sink in.
Where's your square yard?
Somewhere near you, a patch of land is asking for a better conversation with water. Your balcony planter counts. The median strip outside work counts. The neglected corner of campus definitely counts; that's how this whole thing started.
Tell us about the spot (sun, wet or dry, what's there now) and get a list of plants that are already growing well at Hunnicutt.
Nobody does this alone
The first time we needed help, the Upstate answered.
Concetta Cone
Walked our slope the first fall and led the keyline session that still shapes the site plan.
Scott Bunn
Brought a broad fork instead of a slideshow and taught us to read the land before designing it.
Zeph & Whitney Smith
Feed 75 to 100 families a week from two acres around a 1913 schoolhouse.