A Garden Grows at the County Jail
From Mary Zellachild of Ecology Action
Photos by Cynthia Jeavons
Recently, four of us from Ecology Action were invited by our county Sheriff, Tom Allman, to take a special tour of the organic garden located at the Mendocino County Jail in Ukiah, CA. The Sheriff is very proud of the garden, and is interested in taking it to the next stage with the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method, a small-scale agricultural system developed by Ecology Action.
So that’s what we did last Friday. We were met and welcomed by Vicki Phillips-Stout, Coordinator of Inmate Services, who gave us a tour of the rooms where inmates can take classes. She told us that Hugo Boeckx was the person behind the inmate programs there. One of the rooms was filled with computers and the wall was covered with photos of inmates who had received their GED by taking classes.
Vicki then introduced us to Terri McCartney, the garden coordinator. Terri led us through several locked gates to the open center of the jail compound. We walked first through an area with a few plantings which is next in line to be developed on a larger scale. It was obvious that the soil there was hard and unpromising looking, but Terri said that’s the way the whole garden area had been. She continued to lead us on around the end of one of the buildings, where the main garden came into view.
A crowd of healthy adolescent sunflower plants dominated the scene. As we moved past them a large variety of other vegetable plants appeared: cucumbers, carrots, radishes, broccoli, lettuce and many different types of squash. A pumpkin patch took up a large area and a mound of grape vines flourished in the middle of the garden. Some tomato plants peeped out of an inter-planting of other vegetables, protecting them until the weather warms up more. Terri said that next January and February the inmates will grow bare-root trees for Common Vision, an organization that helps kids plant trees at schools.
Terri told us the garden has only been growing a year, and it was bare ground when they started. She works it with a rotating group of four women inmates; they double-dig one long bed at a time, shoveling the extra soil over to a neighboring site for a future bed. She said the women work really hard and that’s why the garden is so productive. Kitchen scraps are brought to the garden every day and are incorporated into big compost piles-after the piles mature, they provide fertilizer for the growing beds. The produce from the garden provides some of the food for the inmates. The overall purpose of the garden is to give the women a different mindset and show them they have other options. Gardening also helps them get grounded. Terri said that lots of the women who work with her hope to start gardens when they go home.
After we finished at the jail garden, Terri took us to the garden she coordinates at the Ford Street Homeless Shelter. It is a neat, attractive spot behind the shelter, a new-looking complex of buildings that houses 70 homeless people. She said there have been up to 20 children living there with their families. Dinner is cooked at the shelter and classes offered in life skills. Because of Terri’s work at the shelter garden, Hugo Boeckx asked her if she would start a garden at the jail. She pointed out some of the other interconnections between the programs: Seedlings are started at the Ford Street garden then transplanted into the jail garden; the jail garden lets some of its plants produce seeds, which are then processed by developmentally disabled kids at the high school (across the street); and the seeds are returned to Ford Street to start the cycle over again. People who volunteer at Ford Street and other community gardens are given $20 worth of scrip for each volunteer hour, which they can redeem at the Ukiah Farmers Market.
Update: At the 2008 Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Ukiah, CA, an organically grown pumpkin raised in this garden by the female inmates of the Mendocino County Jail weighed in at 569 pounds and took fourth prize! Read the full story at online at the Ukiah Daily Journal.
