AGH Plant Day 2024

Overview

The Plant Day 2024 event was organised on 21 May 2024. The event took place in the lobby of building C-7 at AGH University of Cracow campus. Approximately 1500 people benefited from the event by receiving sunflower plants, wild meadow seeds, participating in the “Best Plant” competition, and/or being educated on the importance of keeping and maintaining plants and meadows in urban settings.

Idea

This event was organised by me in cooperation with the Faculty of Humanities AGH Student Council. Keeping plants in working and studying facilities is proven to reduce stress and enhance learning abilities. It is also simply pleasant to have a nice flower on your desk.

Having the ability to organise a major event, I decided to use my knowledge and connections established in the Agrocybernetics project and create a plant-inspired event. With some previous experience in organising public gatherings and social events, I set my goal to distribute 300 sunflowers among students, teachers, and administrative staff at AGH University.

Planning

To distribute flower seedlings, I had to research whether it is possible according to Polish law. As it turned out, if someone isn’t a professional agriculture specialist (farmer/processor/etc.) it is legal to hand out seeds and plants as long as it is on-site, from hand to hand, without the use of the Internet.

I figured out that buying hundreds of plastic containers would cost too much, so I started to think of options to make them on my own. Since I had a lot of recycled paper and the plantings wouldn’t need to last in them for long, I decided to make origami paper boxes.

After all the pots were ready, I decided to test whether my sunflower seeds would grow in them (and how long it would take).

My next step was to think about “what could go wrong?” — my personal pessimistic specialty. I figured that if by any chance on the day of the event there would be any unannounced meeting or additional classes happening in the Faculty, all my plants would vanish faster than intended.

I decided to think about eco-friendly handouts that could also serve as marketing merch for the Student Council. After some digging on marketing supplier websites, I knew that buying ready-made gadgets wasn’t an option.

While working on the origami pots, I had a lot of paper clippings that would go to waste otherwise, which I used to make small envelopes, just the size of a large sticky tape. I printed some paper stickers on my home printer and made seed envelopes with illustrations of colorful flowers. After some rapid user testing, I set up a production line with hundreds of seed packages being made every day by my colleagues.

After all the giveaways were ready, I started thinking about ways to engage the student community to ensure more participation. I came up with a competition that required students to bring a plant from their home/dorm/flat to the university and show it to a judging panel. The idea was that students would need to carry the plant all day, sparking conversations about why they had a random plant on their desk during classes.

To motivate students to participate, I needed to provide prizes for the best plants. After sending out hundreds of emails, I managed to gather 10 colorful gift boxes filled with gardening-related goodies for the winners.

Due to legal limitations, the final theme of the competition was to bring the most interesting plant, with judges making qualitative and arbitrary decisions on the outcomes.

While searching for event partners, I succeeded in establishing partnerships with a few Polish and international companies from the farming industry.

The last step was to plan the actual setting and decorations for the event venue. With my love for paper crafts and an unusual pleasure for printing handmade leaflets, I decided to create handmade banners and small brochures with instructions on what to do with the plants.

I gathered all the planting seeds I had at home and displayed them in jars at the event. My growing lights were used to set the mood.

Just a few days before the event, a ground frost occurred where I live. All the sunflowers I had planted and curated froze and had to be discarded. I wasn’t prepared for this, but I decided to replant them in fabric pots I was testing at the time, hoping they would be ready for the big day…

Day zero

I live about 120 kilometers away from the university (about a two-and-a-half-hour drive through mountain regions), so I had to get up early and head to Cracow.

The sunflower seedlings, which managed to grow in such a short time, survived the drive and were ready to be given out.

The event wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Student Council members, who organised the venue and acted as hosts during the event.

The event was declared a success by the Dean’s Office, the student community, and Student Council members after hundreds benefited from the event.

Summary

Plant Day 2024 and its afterparty made me realize that plant-themed educational gatherings could not only be fun but also benefit communities with no prior connection to plants or nature.

My long-term plan is to create a handbook describing the process of organising such events and to introduce plant-sharing activities in my current and future workplaces.