For Homeless Veterans, Gardening Can Be the Therapy That Gets Them Back on Their Feet

It’s commonly known that gardening can be good for the soul, but for a group of veterans trying to leave homelessness forever, it can be a complete lifesaver.
Which is exactly why early last Wednesday, Coralei Kluver, an assistant manager at Home Depot was hard at work shoveling dirt to help build a greenhouse that will benefit a group of veterans living at Independence Hall, a 20-bed transitional housing center in Billings, Mont.
Home Depot provided a $10,000 grant for the greenhouse project, and the store’s employees brought the volunteer muscle. Many of them came to help in the morning before working a full shift at the store. “It’ll be a long day, but it’s worth it,” Kluver tells Zach Benoit of the Billings Gazette. “It’s good to be here and we’re glad to be helping.”
Kluver has a special motivation to help veterans: Several years ago, her cousin was killed while on active duty.
Since 2011, the veterans at Independence Hall have run a thriving garden, but the greenhouse will help extend the growing season in the chilly Rocky Mountain climate. Some of the produce grown is used as food for the vets at Independence Hall, while the remainder is sold at the farmer’s markets held in the center’s parking lot or donated to the community. One year, more than 800 pounds worth was dolled out.
Bill Holder, the director of veterans services for the local chapter of Volunteers of America (VOA), the nonprofit that runs Independence Hall, tells Benoit, “We’ve already got our community garden here, so hopefully we’ll be able to start earlier and grow more.” Holder says Independence Hall is “not a shelter. It’s a program where they transition to a self-sufficient lifestyle.”
Gardening “gives the opportunity to have something that’s therapeutic,” says Dave Shumway, the director of communications for the Northern Rockies division of the VOA. “They’re transitioning from being homeless to a more normal life and what’s more normal than working on a garden in your backyard?”
MORE: Meet the Marine Who Planted A Special Garden for His Fellow Vets
 

From Seed to Harvest, These Green Thumbs Nourish Chicago School Gardens

Gardens are a good thing. Period. But in an inner-city school, they’re wonderful. They provide hands-on lessons on how plants grow and encourage kids to eat nutritiously. Plus, the green space beautifies the school.
But starting a school garden and maintaining it turns out to be more complicated than some might think. That’s because everyone is excited to plant one initially, but if teachers are solely responsible for their upkeep, they can become too busy with classroom duties and might not be around over the summer when the plants need tending.
Fortunately, that’s where the nonprofit Gardeneers comes in. It offers a program to plant gardens at Chicago schools and maintain them while also providing lesson plans and a weekly visiting teacher.
Teach for America alumni May Tsupros and Adam Zmick, who founded the Gardeneers, explain on a crowd fundraising website that their model for becoming rotating garden specialists is based on the idea of a visiting speech pathologist, who rotates to a different school each day of the week. The Gardeneers rotate among schools, teaching lessons during school related to the curriculum in such subjects as chemistry, biology, and nutrition, and then enlist the kids’ help to tend the plants in the after school garden clubs.
During the summer, the nonprofit organizes neighborhood volunteers to help keep the plants thriving. The Gardeneers make sure the garden’s produce reaches the children’s lunch plates, coordinating with cafeteria staff to ensure everybody gets to taste the bounty.
According to Cortney Ahem of Food Tank, the Gardeneers offer their services throughout the growing season to schools for a maximum of $10,000, compared to the $35,000 some companies charge for garden installations alone.
Three Chicago schools have jumped at the chance to work with the Gardeneers this growing season, and Zmick and Tsupros hope to expand that to 50 schools during the next five years. They plan to focus on schools where 90 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Zmick told Ahem, “School gardens are incredibly important from an educational perspective. There’s so much data about how these gardens can improve academic outcomes, reduce discipline problems, develop job skills, and strengthen the local community.”
Tsupros thinks gardens can be the key to national renewal. “I believe with all my heart that food, nutrition, and community are the foundations on which we need to build and focus our attention regarding education in Chicago and all the United States. One small seed can grow a bountiful harvest, and I hope that Gardeneers can be that seed.”
MORE: Read About The Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But A Community Too
 
 
 
 

Hungry? This Community Planted an Entire Forest of Free Food

What’s not to love about a forest of free food ? Beacon Food Forest is a 7-acre garden of self-sustaining produce, maintained by local volunteers in Seattle, Washington. Check out this video to learn about this model community and how the idea behind their collaboration can feed a whole town.