When Gardening is a Lifeline and Game-Changer

Articles: When Gardening is a Lifeline and Game-Changer

Contributor

Addie Hahn

Topics: Growing for Biodiversity, Nature is Good For You

Fall 2024

Twenty miles south of Portland, on a wooded 108-acre parcel, is a collection of striking, little-known gardens. In late spring, trails wind between artful geometric beds and pots lined with nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus), flax (Linum spp.), peonies (Paeonia spp.), lupines (Lupinus spp.), and lilies (Lilium spp.). One section bordered by wildflowers is prepped with neat rows of string, waiting for herb starts that will soon be carried over from an onsite greenhouse. A meandering, three-dimensional dragon that started with a child’s sketch was formed with heavy clay soil and is now filling in with bright succulents. Yet another section houses a generous vegetable plot that, come midsummer, will feed the gardeners who work to bring these outdoor areas to life.

Ten years ago, this area was a stark concrete pad. Today, the gardens that have replaced it are a lush focal point and gathering place for the community. From all angles, it’s clear the space has been carefully planned out and well tended. Gardeners onsite, outfitted in navy tees and sweatshirts, work with intense focus in five-hour shifts five days a week. Some of them are barefoot as they move in and around the dirt, discussing their favorite blooms and plans for warm-weather succession plantings.

A butterfly conservation lab is just across the parking lot, near another small but rapidly growing garden, also lovingly cared for. This lab has increased the Oregon population of the critically endangered native Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas editha taylori). Outside the lab’s windows are curved rows of the species’ preferred food source, the hardy plantain (Plantago spp.)—also known as plantago and unrelated to cooking plantains—beside complementary Oregon natives.

Both the gardens and butterfly programs are all the more notable for the unexpected teams who make them a reality: a dedicated group of Adults in Custody (AIC) at Coffee Creek Women’s Correctional Facility, the only all-female prison in the state of Oregon.

Nature fuels powerful human growth

What happens behind the walls of jail and prison is largely hidden from public view and can be mysterious to those with no close connection to AIC.

“People don’t know what prisons are like,” reflected Rima Green, director of the Lettuce Grow program at Growing Gardens and provider of horticultural education and gardening experiences to incarcerated people in Oregon.

Both the gardens and butterfly lab at Coffee Creek encourage women in challenging and often restrictive settings to make powerful connections with the natural world, which can be both liberating and perspective-shifting.

“This is meaningful,” Green said. “Giving people meaningful work is important.”

Once an AIC herself as a young woman, Green went on to have a 30-year career at Tektronix, an Oregon-based test equipment manufacturer. In retirement, she found her way back to prison in a supervisory role via her longtime love of gardening. Though clearly admired by her workers for her dedication, Green stressed it’s the AIC themselves driving the success of these programs. The women are entrusted with significant responsibilities and have responded with curiosity and diligence, transforming their immediate environments as well as the struggling ecosystems outside their facility.

“This has been life-changing in an institution where you don’t have much,” explained Ashley, who works in the butterfly lab. “This program is extremely important to me; I’m going to be here for a while. To know that they trust us with a life form takes a lot … they said, ‘We’re going to put this in your hand’ to see if it thrives,’ and it has.”

The evidence so far is compelling: between the opening of the butterfly lab in 2017 and March 2024, the team has saved 9,108 Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies. There are garden programs in all 12 state prisons in Oregon and the federal prison in Sheridan. All told, these spaces take up 50 acres of land and—in non-COVID-19 years—have produced 350,000 pounds of food, all of which has returned to AIC’s plates. While the recidivism rate of United States AIC hovers around 75 percent nationally and 30 percent in Oregon, the recidivism rate for AIC in the state who have participated in the gardening program stands at a mere 4 percent.

‘the recidivism rate for AIC in the state who have participated in the gardening program stands at a mere 4 percent.’

Both the therapeutic focus and affiliations of these initiatives are likely causes of their success. Some kind of “nature-based programming” exists in every state incarceration system in some capacity, said Matt DelSesto, a teaching fellow at Boston College who also oversees prison education programming for a local facility. Many of these, however, primarily meet the needs of institutions and may include things like public space cleanups.

In contrast, therapeutic horticulture (which can include nature-based therapy, education, or job training programs) “is designed to meet the needs of incarcerated participants related to their education, vocational training, or mental health,” DelSesto said. The latter are less common and usually involve collaborations with outside organizations with special expertise.

Ecologies of Justice, out in 2025, will explore themes around prisons and jails, along with ecological sustainability and environmental justice. The book is inspired by a set of conferences DelSesto put together in 2021 and 2022.

A hopeful return of an endangered species and the human spirit

On an early mid-May morning, 14 women—seven lab workers and seven plantago gardeners—eagerly await the arrival of a new batch of butterflies. The US Department of Fish and Wildlife collects the Taylor’s checkerspots, which has colors that range from orange to deep red, black and cream.

The Oregon Zoo initially set up the lab in 2017 in a former storeroom on the medium-security side. The Institute of Applied Ecology now oversees this program, which focuses on the captive rearing and raising of both plantago for endangered checkerspots and violets (Viola spp.) for the zoo’s recovery of the Oregon silverspot butterfly (Speyeria zerene hippolyta), a threatened species.

Excitement in the lab at this time of year is palpable. “You can see it in our faces,” Ashley acknowledged. “Provide us with an opportunity, and we’re laser focused. You come in here and have a sense of purpose and it does a lot for our mental health, too.”

Karen Hall, program director of ecological education at Institute for Applied Ecology, sees this impact up close all the time. “If the public had an opportunity to work with our crews, they’d be surprised by the strong work ethic, the desire to do good, the willingness to dedicate themselves toward something bigger, and how much the crews look just like any other group of Americans outside the walls,” she said.

Checkerspots, a pollinator, have been endangered since 2013 due to rising development and loss of prairie land. “They’re like the miner’s canary—if you remember back to 20 to 30 years ago when you’d see fields of butterflies, you don’t see those anymore,” said Sarah, who’s been with the lab since it first opened.

After the insects come in, the butterfly team will harvest their eggs, and then the larvae will undergo six molting phases, known as instars, over months. In mid- to late summer, the metabolisms of the insects slow and the caterpillars enter a warm phase of diapause, or dormancy, as they huddle together in webbed packets, usually in their fifth instar. As temperatures cool, they enter cold diapause and the team transports the caterpillars outside to a shed and monitors them frequently for movement—a sign they may be entering their sixth instar. The pupa or chrysalis stage follows, usually in February or March. The team aims to release larvae for the field in the late instar stages rather than as chrysalides, but environmental cues largely determine this.

Plantains serve as both a food source and a place for the butterflies to lay their eggs. To prepare the field, AIC tilled the soil with shovels and hoes and then spread the seed out by hand. With the butterfly’s food source now well established, workers deadhead the plants and pick leaves by size according to the daily needs of the lab.

AIC can lean on existing skillsets as lab team members while adding new ones, too.

“I have a history as a registered nurse. Science was my major,” Ashley explained. “I’m not doing patient care anymore, I’m doing animal care, but I literally can bring in some of my firsthand knowledge and apply it here. I have a gentle hand—I worked with peds in the ER.”

Desserrey is quick to notice tiny, wandering instars when few others are able to spot them. “With me, I’m their eyes, I catch the ones who sneak out. I bead all day long, so it gives me that vision.”

At each season’s end, the Applied Institute of Ecology holds certificate ceremonies to celebrate the contributions of crew members and give back a little, usually with food if allowed, and offer an opportunity to speak about the meaning of this experience in their lives.

“Without exception,” Hall said, “they all love the program. I’ve heard it discussed as being a space where they have some autonomy, feel safe, feel connected, and that they take their relationship with the organism (plant or butterfly) seriously.”

Building valuable skills and gardening for life

At the heart of the minimum-security side at Coffee Creek, the courtyard and its gardens are a flurry of bodies coming and going, AIC circling the grounds, the sky above a clear, cloudless blue. Briefly, you might sense you could be anywhere, in any public square, absorbing the sun and pure delight of being a human outside on a warm spring day, flowers blooming, the promise of vegetables ripening soon. Overhead, a small bird swoops down between a row of tall green stalks before settling in a nest filled with tiny mottled brown and blue eggs.

While some crew members discuss prepping their long rows for summer vegetables, another group outlines plans for Mother’s Day weekend, when children will visit and can help their mothers put a strawberry plant (Fragaria sp.) into the ground and take another one home. The place feels lively and welcoming, contrary to what you might expect in the center of a prison.

“Girls walk in circles all day here and they get to see this,” Meagan said. “It brings them back to their childhood.”

When Rima Green set out to build on the existing gardening program, she was driven to go beyond teaching AIC a hobby while incarcerated; she wanted to create opportunities that could lead to sustainable jobs after leaving jail or prison. To do this, she consulted the Oregon Association of Nurseries and asked a pivotal question: which skills might motivate employers to overlook felonies when hiring?

Ultimately, her research led her to adopt the Master Gardener curriculum in cooperation with Oregon State University and the Oregon State Extension Service. She teaches Seed to Supper first, an introductory course on how to grow food with limited funds. Her classes then get progressively more difficult and focus on topics like disease diagnostics and plant taxonomy. Upcoming courses include small farm business as well as canning and preserving.

Former AIC can opt to complete the Oregon Master Garden Certification by enrolling in the Extension Service Master Gardens Program and providing gardening volunteer time. Conversely, the certification AIC complete while incarcerated can stand alone and be used to seek employment in the Oregon horticultural industry.

“I’ve had people go on to work in various nurseries, including Garden Fever and Portland Nursery,” Green said. “They always tell me graduates of our program are very hardworking.”

Before the gardens on the minimum security section of the prison were flourishing, lunch and dinner vegetables tended to be sparse year-round. “We get some radishes, three pieces of yellow squash, a couple of zucchini,” Sophia said. “But summer now means having this program in here and being able to have the veggies go straight from the garden into the kitchen. It’s amazing, it’s a game changer. People are ecstatic.” AIC now enjoy heirloom tomatoes and some learn what sprouts are for the first time.

The garden on the medium-security side, though younger and smaller, is also a revered spot with a dedicated crew. There are whitewashing soap tubs—thoughtfully repurposed and cut in half for use as containers for young blueberries (Vaccinium spp.), herbs taking root, and thriving raised wooden beds of kale (Brassica oleracea) and chard (Beta vulgaris).

The plot began humbly as a sand pit and AIC initially used plastic spoons to transport seeds from the cafeteria. Slowly, as the women have proven themselves, the institution has been supporting them more, bit by bit.

AIC on the medium-security site are allowed to eat what they grow while outside and are hopeful that someday they may be able to order the very produce they rear on canteen or supply lists, to use for cooking in communal kitchens with microwaves.

“Most of the canteen list unfortunately is powdered products, things you’d use to go camping,” Melissa said. “What we’d like to do is get the attention of the state, the people in charge of the canteen, and come up with better solutions for us to purchase, so we can take better care of ourselves.”

For some AIC, their gardening educations at Coffee Creek have led them to envision a whole new life post-release. “I’m going to homestead when I leave here,” Meagan said. “Getting to know soil needs, when to plant, what you can plant together so you have a continual crop … this program is teaching me how to feed my family, feed myself. It’s bringing us back to where we came from, to what our ancestors did. All the things that are healthy for your heart and for your soul.”