Good rental areas for students? Gardening?

There are some areas near the university that have lots of student housing-Bonne Esperance, for one. Students frequently rent a house together and one or two might have cars. Your other choice is to be on the safari route. Bring your bike down, but what are you going to do in the rain or at night? You ought to have a back-up plan. 😉 The north side is known for plenty of water and pleasant farming. You will see all of this when you arrive.

Thanks East Ender! I take it the safari route is one of the public transit routes? I'll try to look for something close by. I might also check out the north side due to the farming... but I aim to stay close to campus if possible and maybe find a place with a deck or balcony that I can put planters out on. However, with my graduate stipend I am on a very tight budget and biking is the cheapest option for me. No worries though, I bike in the rain and dark here =) washington state is very wet!

There is no Safari access to the Northside and it is a VERY steep long hill/ mountain to bike in every case - no natural fresh water and generally poor soil make gardening a plant by plant event. There are no homes at all on the Northside that have public water pipes that bring water to your house - the only water available for washing, cooking, bathing, drinking, flushing is what rains on your roof and is stored in the cistern and pressurized by an electric pump - not always much left over for watering the garden.
You will NOT want to bike in the dark here!!

Zero: How come the Frenchies have always farmed the north side?? I didn't mean for honis to use the safari system on the north side. I was more thinking that, with a limited budget, s/he would have room mates for car pooling purposes.

honis: I am not going to talk you out of your biking fantasy, but...this is not Washington state, although we get the same amount of rain per year. Drivers here do not share the roads with anyone. The roads are barely two lanes wide, no shoulders. Pot holes are huge. It is very dark at night- poor lighting. Bring your bike. Go ahead.;)

One more thought. There is a bus route that runs right by the UVI to the north and west side as well as towards french town. See if you can find a place to stay near that route so you won't have to bike much. But remember that you are in STT. The bus schedules are hard to figure out. And they don't always run on time.

billd

If you terrace the land and conserve and enrich the soil you can surely farm small plots on the N. Side - it is still very much a plant by plant event - I surely didn't mean it was impossible - I have been growing many things on my land for over 30 years with varying success crop- wise or seasonally - a serious compost effort will pay off amazingly over time - pot gardening is fairly easy for many varieties.
The VITRAN bus goes from UVI east to Crown Mt. road up , out the Brewers bay cutoff -[rt 301] to the West End at the Bordeaux intersection - pretty dependable but not frequent.

I have been here on STT for over 13 years and I know of NO ONE that commutes by bicycle..the roads here are just too dangerous, what with their potholes, no shoulders, steep grades and blind corners...and that's not even mentioning the drivers...they will run you down and not even look in their rear view mirror to see if you survived...EE said it right...go ahead, bring your bike...but it's gonna get rusty very quickly from sitting there immobile...then it'll be worth nothing when you go to sell it because it's not worth shipping home...bicycling for transport is a fantasy...for pleasure, sure, but not as your main form of transport...and you'd have to be in PHENOMENAL shape to get around, what with these hills....after you get here, after you see what the roads are like, if you still want a bike, take a taxi to K-Mart and buy a cheap one... good luck to ya!;)

thanks all for the bus suggestions. I probably will aim for proximity to campus over any gardening concerns .. I figure I can probably do planters and pots anywhere I end up. I've been to STJ and remember the roads being narrow and shoulderless. I will pay close attention to the roads I'd to bike depending on where I rent.. definitely getting a vest to be as bright as possible. I'll be renting a car while I apartment hunt and will make sure to check out the roads!