Lynchburg Grows is months ahead of schedule and the students at Lynchburg College have a lot to do with it.

“They really were a catalyst last spring when the girls soccer team stepped up to clear the first greenhouse,” Michael Van Ness, a Lynchburg Grows member said. “It just gave us a lot and revitalized our energy.”

This past spring hundreds of volunteers began helping Lynchburg Grows, a not-for-profit organization, bring the Schenkel Farm back to life. In the last four months 600 volunteers have donated more than 3,000 hours to the urban farm.

More than 300 of them were from Lynchburg College. Lynchburg College’s involvement began last April when the women’s soccer team braved the thorns to save surviving roses. They were followed by 270 LC freshmen on Make A Difference Day, 50 students from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College’s athletic department and dozens of Virginia Episcopal School students.

Between 1952 and 1999 the greenhouses were home to more than 1 million cut flowers. The Schenkels closed them in 1999 leaving behind roses that could not be sold or given away. Five years later, dozens of fragrant Fire & Ice, Lavonde, Golden Fantasy, Tiniki and Royalty roses remain, having crept through the open windowpanes into the cold winter air.

So far the volunteers have replanted and sold roses, built compost beds, planted organic lettuces and helped repair some of the oldest standing commercial greenhouses in the state.

“They’ve really been instrumental in helping us get our fall vegetables growing,” Van Ness said of the volunteers.

With the help of additional volunteers and interns, Lynchburg Grows anticipates having a growing organic business, a biodiesel project to recycle waste from the college’s cafeteria, an aquaponics system where fish and plants flourish, soil remediation studies and more in the coming months and years.

All of the projects are based on the fact that the founders want to see Lynchburg Grows become self-sustaining.

Lynchburg Grows was established with the goal of providing environmental education, horticultural therapy, workforce development and food production and distribution. The group has purchased an option to buy the Schenkel Farm, situated on a six and a half acre lot behind City Stadium - the old Schenkel Farm, once home to 25 percent of the states cut flowers - that Lynchburg Grows hopes to purchase for $319,000 this summer.

“We’ve got it up and running but we still need to raise $319,000,” said Van Ness. “With seven months left, it’s pretty much crunch time.”

For more information about Lynchburg Grows call (434) 846-5665.