Rochelle Baker

A ground-breaking collaboration between Memorial University faculty, students, and staff with community partners and inmates at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary (HMP) is offering people in the prison an innovative arts-based curriculum that combines mindfulness and creativity with hands-on gardening and landscaping training. “It all started last fall, when the Research Exchange Group on Horticultural Therapy at the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health Research hosted a presentation by a group of therapists from the Insight Garden Program at San Quentin Prison in California,” group convener Dr. Jan Buley, Assistant Professor at Memorial University’s Faculty of Education, explains. “ Lucky for us, one of our members happened to be a mental health and addictions counsellor who was working at HMP at the time. When Susan Green asked us if some interested inmates might watch the presentation by videoconference, of course we said yes!” After the meeting, inspired by the San Quentin Program and the wealth of research the group had uncovered in support of prison gardening programs, a working group started planning a gardening program at HMP. This group has been meeting weekly ever since with a group of inmates and mental health specialists at HMP to get the project started. “From the very beginning, we all wanted to make sure that the real leaders of this project would be the inmates themselves,” Dr. Buley notes, “And so the inmates created their vision for the program and gave the program its name- the Phoenix Garden - a name that they said reflected the idea of new beginnings, of rising up, of building a fresh new life.” The inmates are now designing a logo for the project and are already taking care of plants provided to them by Memorials’ Botanical Garden. Tim Walsh is Nursery Manager and Horticulturist at Memorial University’s Botanical Gardens. “The Phoenix Gardeners, as they have come to be known, learn a little more each week about mindfulness, about keeping a journal, and, most importantly, they are learning a lot about plants and how they grow.” “Everyone involved is learning – mostly, we are discovering that talking about gardening is a lot like talking about life itself,” Dr. Buley added, “ And we even sang a song about it! In one of our sessions, the inmates sang about what it takes to make a garden grow. And after that, as a kind of proof of concept, everyone got to see an amaryllis flower that they planted themselves emerge bright and strong from a small pot of soil. In prison. In the dead of winter. Our first Phoenix Garden success!” The Phoenix Gardeners have a lot more work ahead of them. Plans are now underway to purchase and build a cedar greenhouse in the prison yard and to start growing vegetables from raised beds as well. The inmates will take responsibility for cultivation, weeding, watering, and feeding in the garden. Then they will harvest from their gardens and the food they produce will be shared with their fellow inmates and with the wider community. “In this way, the inmates will have an important chance to see how they can make a meaningful contribution to each other and to their community,” Dr. Buley noted. The Phoenix Gardeners have a website now and are working in partnership with the John Howard Society and with prison officials at HMP, all of whom are committed to making this dream garden into a reality, to raise funds for the purchase of the greenhouse and equipment. Want to donate? Click here. Sun Valley Greenhouses have provided a generous discount on a new cedar greenhouse (moveable in case we have a new prison in coming years) and are helping with the construction. The group hopes to launch the greenhouse and outdoors activities on June 30, 2021. As Tim Walsh points out, “The Phoenix Gardeners at HMP have a chance to connect to the natural world but they are strengthening other bonds, too—to the self, to each other, and to the community.” Participants who complete the curriculum will receive a diploma certifying their vocational training as gardeners. “As all gardeners know,” Dr. Buley said, “Time spent nurturing a garden creates not only a beautiful outer world, but a brighter inner world, too. We think gardening and nature-based therapies have the potential to transform lives.” The group looks forward to seeing how the Phoenix Garden at HMP, like prison gardening programs around the world, has potential to end ongoing cycles of incarceration, and to create a safer and healthier community for everyone.