If you’ve never heard of this, an ingenious, brilliantly humane program started in New Orleans, which has been developing small volunteer run gardens in the size of solitary confinement cells in connection with inmates there and elsewhere, merits serious consideration.
The concept is simple, therapeutic and cyclical: plants are chosen by an inmate in solitary confinement, then planted by a volunteer gardener nearby on the outside (often with bars on one or two sides) and once grown redistributed through a prisoner’s apothecary.
The late Herman Wallace, one of the “Angola Three” former Black Panthers and artist activist jackie summell (who doesn’t capitalize her name) conceived of this initially years ago, and their vision is being fulfilled with funding from the New York-based Creative Capital and Art for Justice.
When paired up, a volunteer gardener and inmate, called a solitary gardener, correspond on what to plant, sometimes in great detail. Some people who visit the gardens then write the inmate as well, creating even more connections.
One of the inmates participating Tim Young, serving time at San Quentin State Prison, chose mugwort and stinging nettles, and told a reporter for the Next City website that “it’s a crime to encase people in concrete cages and deprive them of nature. What the garden has done is give me a greater appreciation of all the things that I am no longer able to feel, touch, or enjoy. I haven’t touched the earth or leaned upon a tree in over 22 years.”
Future plans are for formerly incarcerated to be able to get jobs at the gardens. When released, some inmates who have taken part in the program, keep their garden going such as trans woman Arya Serenity who worked with Side Walk Ends Farm in Providence.
On its about page Solitary Gardens describes itself as “ a social sculpture and collaborative project that cultivates conversations around alternatives to incarceration by catalyzing compassion. This project directly and metaphorically asks us to imagine a landscape without prisons.”
Does anyone know of an existing program like this in Washoe County and if not, should we start one?