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Photo by Jon Kersey
February 2006
Cultivating Hope
Garden Projects Plant Seeds of Change for Inmates and the Homeless
By Jason Mark
San Francisco’s County Jail #3 is an oversized, fortress-like building, a seven-story hulk of pale stone located in the hills south of the city. Visitors to the jail, which is the primary detention center for convicts serving months-long sentences, reach the prison by first passing through the well-kept neighborhoods of suburban San Bruno. Then, after a sharp turn, the road abruptly twists into a dead end, and the visitor is at the guard gates, confronted by the uncompromising mass of the prison. The jail’s dark, narrow windows are set in a dull, ever-watchful stare.
But, once inside the barbed-wire fence, a quick drive down an unmarked side road reveals a different sight: well-ordered lines of potted perennial plants, a lovely glass greenhouse, neat rows of beets, carrots and lettuce. A hillside of eucalyptus trees and California savannah encloses the quiet scene out of view of the prison walls.
This farm inside the city jail is the home of the San Francisco Garden Project, a nonprofit organization that works with prisoners, ex-convicts, and at-risk youth to provide opportunities away from crime. The organization’s method is elegantly simple — it provides a calm, outdoor setting that gives troubled individuals newfound strength, confidence, and self-esteem. By tending plants, the idea goes, the project’s participants will also be cultivating themselves.
It is one of several Northern California organizations employing “horticultural rehabilitation.” The Sonoma County jail has a garden program similar to San Francisco’s. And in Santa Cruz, the Homeless Garden Project uses farming to empower people who often feel weak and alienated.
“Green spaces speed up the healing process,” says Joy Harrison, Administrative Director of the American Horticultural Therapy Association, a professional organization that counts 800 US practitioners of the steadily growing discipline. “People just feel better. The greater your connection to the natural world, the greater your sense of well being and peacefulness and relaxation.”
Horticultural therapy has a long tradition going back at least as far as the 18th century, when doctors often took their patients on garden walks. Modern studies support such long-held practices. Research has shown that merely being in a green environment stimulates endorphins while lowering blood pressure and heart rate. Today, horticultural therapy is used with Alzheimer’s sufferers to improve memory; with the developmentally disabled to enhance cognitive skills; with the mentally disabled to provide a sense of repose; and with prisoners and the homeless to build the skills needed to function in mainstream society.
The empirical evidence is backed up by common sense wisdom. As any backyard gardener will tell you, just getting your hands dirty can help to cleanse the soul.
Chard in the Jailyard
The SF Jail Garden Project set down its first roots in 1982 when Catherine Sneed, then a counselor at the prison, started working with a crew of inmates to reclaim eight acres of farmland that had been used to grow the jail’s food when the prison was built in the 1930s. The first plantings were modest — just a few rows of leeks and chard. At first, administrators and guards were skeptical of the work. But soon the inmates’ garden experience began to bear fruit as the number of fights in the jail declined.
Sneed felt the project had to go a step further and offer the inmates real job skills, since the inability to find work upon release often leads former prisoners to return to crime and land right back in jail. Sneed enlisted the support of SF Sheriff Michael Hennessey, a friend of hers from law school, to launch a full-fledged job-training program in landscaping and organic agriculture. Sure enough, recidivism rates began to show signs of dropping.
Today, the Garden Project has approximately 20 participants enrolled in the program — though the number varies depending on the funding available and also on how many prisoners the guards agree to release. The farm donates its produce to Bay Area soup kitchens, senior centers, and Boys and Girls Clubs. The project also grows a variety of perennials plants that are used on landscaping jobs.
For inmates, one of the most valuable aspects of the project is simply having the ability to get away from the grey prison walls and get out into the open space of green fields and blue sky. “People really appreciate that it’s quiet here when they come out,” says David Sneed, Catherine’s brother, who serves as co-administrator of the project. “Because, if you’ve ever been in jail, you know that it’s loud and crazy and there’s a lot going on.”
At the same time, the program employs several former convicts who counsel current inmates on ways to stay out of jail. Elgin Major is one of those counselors. A mountain of a man with hands the size of softballs, Major did several jail stints in the 1980s on drug and robbery charges. Now Elgin helps program participants find jobs with the SF Department of Public Works, the Public Utilities Commission or landscaping companies after they leave jail.
“When I work with the new kids, I can give them some counseling because I’ve been there,” says Major. “This allows them to see something else different from what they usually see — gang banging and drugs and all that. These kids are from the tough area. They learn not to be so destructive, and it does help.”
The Garden Project appears to be helping Tyrell Jackson, a lanky, soft-spoken 19-year-old from the often-violent Alemany Housing Projects in southeast San Francisco. Jackson, along with several other so-called “at-risk” youth, earns $12.50 an hour working at the farm, gets breakfast and lunch there — cooked by Major — and a ride to and from the site every day. Jackson says he feels incredibly indebted to the Sneeds and the Garden Project for providing him with opportunities he wouldn’t otherwise have.
“Some jobs you hate. This is a job you look forward to,” Jackson says. “This is a good job, you wouldn’t want to lose it. Some people, you know, don’t get second chances.”
A Haven for the Homeless
A second chance is exactly what the Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project is providing to Socorro, a pretty Latina woman who suddenly found herself homeless at middle age. Socorro says that she “got caught up in the wrong crowd and started doing bad things.” She ended up in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation home, which directed her to the Homeless Garden as a way to pay her room and board.
“I love it here,” says Socorro. “It’s really helping me. This place is awesome.”
Socorro is one of 15 “trainees” enrolled in the Homeless Garden’s three-year-long horticultural rehabilitation program. They work 20 hours a week earning the minimum wage. The program also helps find healthcare, childcare, psychological and substance abuse counseling. Produce grown at the project’s three-acre organic farm on the outskirts of Santa Cruz goes to 60 families enrolled in a Community Supported Agriculture service. The Garden’s flowers are used in bouquets, wreathes, potpourris and other products that are sold at a cheerful little store in downtown Santa Cruz.
Founded in 1990, the Homeless Garden Project is acknowledged as the first of its kind in the nation. Today, similar horticultural therapy programs for the homeless exist in Chicago and Washington, DC, and visitors from Miami and Vancouver, BC have recently visited the Santa Cruz site to explore starting their own projects.
While giving participants job-training in farming and landscaping, the project managers also encourage the trainees to use their time in the garden to set personal goals for themselves. Garden director Patrick Williams is quick to draw parallels between the physically demanding work of farming and the psychologically demanding work of self-improvement. “The simple repetitive work allows people to, you know, work things out. You’re going through your ‘internal garden’ and weeding and pulling things out.”
Homeless Garden trainees clearly appreciate the practical job training skills the project supplies. But in conversations, one trainee after another said that what really matters is the sense of community they get from the garden as well as the comfort of a quiet place. Being homeless is an isolating experience, a harsh contest for basic necessities that leaves people distrustful and afraid. The Garden is a sanctuary for a population that often feels under siege.
At the same time, the tasks of garden work — taking responsibility for making plants grow — builds self-confidence for people who feel they are powerless.
“It’s just nice to be here with all of the people,” says Rick Creswell, a 60-year-old man who has been camping in the woods for most of the last 18 months. “You just feel more secure in the garden. You feel like you’re part of something. It makes you feel like family.”
Jason Mark is the co-author, with Kevin Danaher, of Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power. He is researching a book about the future of food.
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