I took in the earthy perfume of the garden, picked a cherry tomato and popped it in my mouth. My months tending these plants had paid off, and the result was delicious — sharp but mellow, with a soft crunch. I sampled a yellow bell pepper in the next row. It was so sweet and flavorful I could have eaten a meal of these by themselves. I looked over the dozen or so rows: lettuce, cabbage, onions, carrots, cucumbers and melons growing across not-quite an acre.
Unfortunately, that garden at Thumb Correctional Facility in Michigan no longer exists. But that’s where I learned to cultivate plants and grow food from the ground. I felt connected to the world when my hands were in that soil, even if I was also standing in the middle of a prison.
Every prison could benefit from having a garden. The act of cultivating plants and food helps incarcerated people prepare for a better, more responsible life, likely reducing recidivism rates. Research is beginning to suggest that access to nature may be one of the more promising and inexpensive ways to improve mental health and decrease violence. And garden programming in prisons can benefit the outside community too; it keeps operating costs down as we are fed by our harvest while also being able to provide fruits and vegetables to those in need on the outside.
Producing food inside U.S. prisons has a dark side. Perhaps nothing evokes the country’s shadow of criminal justice and agriculture more than the slave plantations that became prisons — Louisiana’s Angola Correctional Center in Louisiana being the most notorious example. And still today, agricultural products produced by prison labor — valued at pennies on the dollar or nothing at all — are sold in stores across the country.
But another, more positive thread exists too. It stretches back to at least the early 1900s, when more progressive prisons used gardens as therapeutic and rehabilitative programming.
Maintaining a garden requires discipline, responsibility and care, traits that are often lacking in prison but are essential to success in the free world. To successfully grow food, you must learn a bit about horticulture and demonstrate attention to detail and gentleness. These skills help prepare people in prison for their eventual return to society; and most of them will, in fact, return.
Research has long established that gardening reduces stress and cortisol levels, and contributes to positive mental health. One of Time magazine’s “25 Best Inventions of 2014” was the “Blue Room” inside an Oregon maximum security prison. There, mere exposure to digital images of nature dramatically improved people’s behavior and mental health.
But the real thing is so much better.
Food grown on the prison grounds can help feed us — decreasing the costs of trucking in outside food at taxpayers’ expense. Same for healthcare costs, which poor nutrition in prison exacerbates. Serve more nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, and people’s health will likely improve.
But even more important, these programs can provide fruits and vegetables to those in need. The garden I tended to donated thousands of pounds of healthy produce to local women’s shelters every year. We produced good fruit — not just in healthy produce, but in the good work of gardening for others that left us proud and gratified to be of help.
Many prisons in Michigan have had gardens, and many of those prisons have shut them down. Our garden shut down due to theft and unsupportive staff, while the administrations at other facilities have discontinued individual garden plots after marijuana plants were discovered there. These are issues that can be dealt with through proper observation and periodic inspection — the same kind that occurs in every other area of prisons. The benefits of prison gardens far outweighs the costs.
I once helped stack a load of over a metric ton of fruits and vegetables, grown here, onto a truck for delivery to a local shelter. That was one of my moments of greatest pride inside prison. I helped grow the produce, tending to it, nurturing it, watering it and fertilizing it, all of which I learned to do behind bars. In every way, gardening reminded me of what it means to truly be alive.
