Flowers may still bloom here and there behind the padlocked gates of Sacramento State?s defunct Community Garden, but Associated Students, Inc. officials say there are no plans to re-open the project ? or to do anything else with the area.

Located near Folsom Boulevard and the Recycling Center on the Sac State campus, the garden closed last year after ASI stripped its funding. It now sits vacant, and no one on campus seems to know what’s going to happen to it.

ASI, which funded and ran the garden before it was shut down, has no plans to re-open the area to students, said ASI Press Secretary Janus Norman. The plot of land could be designated to build new facilities on campus, he said.

“The garden is going to be closed indefinitely,” Norman said.

“That land is university property, and last I heard they were going to use it for the benefit of the campus. I heard they were going to put a building over there.”

Facilities Planning Manager Ron Richardson was also unsure of the property?s future.

“I understand that the garden is going to be closed, as to its future ? (I don?t know),” Richardson said.

The garden was a space set aside by the university for students and community members for cultivating their own small gardens. The property was divided into plots that were signed over to students and rented to community members. Most of the gardens members grew flowers and vegetables as a hobby.

Former Community Garden Director Rene Hamlin suggested in an interview with The Hornet in April that the garden be taken over by the Environmental Studies Department.

“It would be an excellent relationship,” Hamlin said. “The gardens are a special place.”

Hamlin’s suggestion would return the garden to its original owners. The Environmental Studies Department turned control of the garden over to ASI in 1975. It was then that garden plots were offered or rented out to students and members of the surrounding community.

Not everything in the community garden’s past has been rosy. In 1998 the garden was accused of mismanagement when it was discovered that of the $15,000 the garden received in a span of 20 months, more than $12,000 was being spent on the salary of two student employees. It was also discovered that the garden?s phone bill had jumped from $136 in one year to $397 the next.

In 1999, a portion of the community garden had to be moved when the university decided to build an entrance from Folsom Boulevard to the school.