Students in the Ag Quad won’t have to sit on the ground anymore to relax on grass.Two dozen students from Horticulture 2010: The Art of Horticulture, along with two faculty members, helped to transform high quality compost and turf rolls into a living couch made of grass outside Roberts Hall.Prof. Marcia Eames-Sheavly, horticulture, said the sod sofa is part of a project her class does every year to build cohesion.“It is a beautiful, highly functional and visible representation of the use of grass in sculpture,” she said. “It also invites interaction — very different from some public art in that you can literally sit and lie down on it.”According to Sheavly, this is not the first time her class has made art, or furniture, out of sod. One year they built an entire living room suite at the New York State Fair.“We shaped the initial form with shovels, rakes, hands and feet, then began to focus on fine tuning the form: how it would feel to sit on it by literally taking turns sitting to see how comfortable it was,” Sheavly said.The class also focused on drainage concerns in its project on the Ag Quad. Class members will water the sod so it takes root and the grass can continue to grow out.Sheavly says the sofa will thrive until spring, at which point it will be disassembled and the compost will be used for other planting projects.“It is durable and beautiful,” Sheavly said. “Come and enjoy it.”
Original Author: Erika Hooker