In an Oregon women’s prison, gardening soothes prisoners’ anxiety and adds fresh produce to their diets. And some inmates are learning skills that lead to jobs.On her most recent stay at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, 45-year-old Adria White knew that she needed more than a drug treatment program.
“I spent a lot of hours out there — as many as I was allowed. I fell in love with my plants. There’s a bond,” she says. Dahlias became her favorite flower. “They are fast and they are so eye-catching!” She also loved the aroma of the herbs — particularly lavender and sage — and shared them with others. “Women started rubbing lavender on their COVID masks,” she laughs.
White was scheduled to take the next sustainable gardening class in September, right after she’d moved to minimum security, but the entire prison was evacuated due to wildfires. When prisoners and staff returned to the facility, a COVID outbreak resulted in a lockdown that barred all visitors including the Lettuce Grow staff and volunteers.
Because participants cultivate a vegetable garden on site, Lettuce Grow also gives prisoners access to healthy, delicious food, like fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes, spinach, snap peas, kale, lettuce, summer squash and broccoli. In 2020, even amid the pandemic, the State Corrections system grew 365,536 pounds of food. Some 97 percent of that went into the institutions’ kitchens.
But gardening, of course, is a solitary pursuit, and White says getting better at it gave her confidence and made her realize that she do something to make money. The first thing she did after being released this May, she says, was plant a garden at her daughter’s house.
Excellent! This is fantastic for them!