MI Inmates Tending Garden
They’re growing not just crops but new lives at Gateway Community Garden on Detroit’s east side. Michigan prison inmates finishing their sentences at the Gateway halfway house on East Jefferson Avenue at Lillibridge Street have created a small but vibrant example of an inner-city garden. Using a vacant lot and recycled debris from a demolished house nearby, the inmates are growing corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, lettuce and squash. Story from the Detroit Free Press.
The men give away the fruits and vegetables to needy people and appreciate purposeful work to fill their final days of incarceration. For James (Bear) Fuller, 51, who spent 34 years in prison for homicide, the garden is a metaphor for the changes he and other prisoners have tried to make in themselves.
“I look at vegetables and fruits like people,” Fuller said last week. “They need to be nurtured, tended to. A garden needs to be weeded just like a person’s spirit.”
Serving 10 years in Michigan prisons for assault with a deadly weapon, Harley Hubble, 50, spent three of those years studying horticulture. He learned about crops, soil management, landscape design and greenhouses. Now he’s putting that training to good use.
Hubble is one of a few dozen Michigan prison inmates working at the Gateway Community Garden on Detroit’s east side while finishing their sentences at the Gateway halfway house nearby. Though many prisoners work at the garden during their 60-day residency there, most attribute the garden’s success to Hubble, who has taken on the role of master gardener.
“It helps us to do something constructive, give back to the community after our setbacks and mistakes,” Hubble said recently. “And it can humble a person. You come out here and do this, you get a pride and joy out of the design. That makes an individual feel good.”
Ernest Holt, 30, finishing a 4 1/2-year sentence for armed robbery, echoed Hubble’s words.
“It’s very creative, because guys take nothing and make it into something,” he said. “It could have been a vacant field full of trash. We all put our efforts in, our blood, sweat and tears. It came out beautiful.”
Gateway demonstrates that urban agriculture can deliver benefits well beyond simply growing food. In Detroit and in cities across America, community gardens are helping to assimilate immigrants, shelter battered women and train new workforces. Community gardens often provide a rallying point for a hard-hit urban neighborhood.
Therapy and Vegetables
Kristina Davis, a social worker who oversees the inmates at the Gateway halfway house, said the garden fulfills a dual purpose.“It’s providing a therapeutic activity for our residents as well as being able to feed the neighborhood,” she said.
The prisoners themselves agree the garden is good therapy after years behind bars. Vegetables and fruits have become almost like friends.
“I enjoy coming out here daily to check on it and see what’s new, who’s peeking out today, waving at us,” said Caesar Whidby, 41, who has served 20 years for murder.
Helping Hands
The garden, which measures about 50-feet-by-50 feet and grows just off busy East Jefferson Avenue, is beginning to draw attention Neighbors have donated hand tools and seeds. The Belle Isle Conservatory gave the prisoners some tomatoes and pepper plants.Once, as a prisoner mowed the grass with a hand mower, a motorist hauling a rider mower stopped, cut the grass for them, and moved on. A Home Depot employee gave the garden a deep discount on marigold plants that, planted around the perimeter of the garden, repel bugs and pests. The marigolds give off a skunk-like odor when damp, as in the early morning.
“Most furry rodents won’t come bother with it,” Hubble explained.
The garden also gets assistance from the Detroit-based nonprofit group Urban Farming, which supports a network of hundreds of gardens across the nation. Taja Sevelle, a popular entertainer who founded and leads the group, called the Gateway garden “one of those win-win situations that we like to try to create. We look for creative partnerships, and this is a great one.”
Future is uncertainIn an odd coincidence, Davis and one of her recent residents, James (Bear) Fuller, first met 34 years ago, when Davis was just beginning her career in prison social work and Fuller was beginning his sentence for murder. Standing together in the garden recently, Fuller joked, “I started with her, and I finished with her right here.”
“The difference in 34 years, he’s not angry any more,” Davis said.
The conversation prompted Hubble to joke that Fuller’s nickname comes “not because he’s fuzzy and cuddly; because he’s ornery.” But Fuller gave a rueful smile and said softly, “All that anger is gone.”
The Gateway halfway house program is run by a private contractor, Proaction Behavioral Health Alliance of Grand Rapids, on contract with the Michigan Department of Corrections. The program will end Sept. 30. But Davis said she hoped that other ex-offenders using the Gateway house in programs run by Wayne County and federal authorities, or perhaps people from the neighborhood may keep the garden going.
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