Senior chemical engineering student Neil Brown and UT alumnus Chris Weller set forth a proposal for planting self-sustaining gardens across campus. The gardens provided low-maintenance, edible additions to the campus landscape in January 2014. In March the Student Government Association Senate passed a resolution in support of the project and placed the project under the jurisdiction of an SGA committee on environment and sustainability. Student landscape architects devised plans for orchards for McClung Plaza and the green space beside it. Brown estimated the project would cost approximately $36,000, not including salaries of maintenance workers. The group applied to the 2014 Ford College Community Change Grant, which would have awarded $25,000, but the project failed to make the semifinals of the competition after being denied a formal letter of support from the Campus Committee on the Environment. Brown and others worked with the Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum to install a Big Orange Orchard garden that might serve as proof of concept for an on-campus site.