I have been teaching a weekly gardening class at a human services wellness center for people suffering from mental illness.

During our first class in April, we still had about three inches of snow on the two 32-square foot raised beds, just off the parking area. We gathered inside, talked about our individual histories with gardening, and made a wishlist of veggies we wanted to harvest from our garden in just a few months’ time. One client said he was there so he could learn how to better help his mother in the garden. Another discussed his family’s history on Puerto Rican sugar cane fields. At the end of the session, the onsite supervisor came up to me and said, “Wow, you really got ‘Billy’ to talk. He normally doesn’t say much at all.”

What a class, and what a season it will be, I thought.

The healing power of vegetables for mental illness

Over the next few weeks, we cleaned the beds of winter debris and planted seeds of some of our wishlist items in peat pots indoors—lettuce, watermelon, lima beans, zucchini, peppers, and some nasturiums. When the temperature ticked up a bit, we planted some of the surviving seedlings into the beds and supplemented with young plants from the garden center—tomatoes, strawberries, eggplant. We direct-seeded some spinach seeds. We even had a few “rogue” tomatoes emerge from grape tomatoes that spilled their seeds the summer before. Thanks to some amazing soil, careful watering, good light, and great fertilizer, the garden has exploded into a cornucopia of veggies.

The class is not mandatory, but if one of the organization’s clients is interested in coming to the wellness center and getting their hands dirty, they are free to join in. People have come and gone, but a few core folks come more often than not. They are not always at the top of their game. Depending on their medications and circumstances, they could be suffering or distracted during class. And that’s okay. The garden always seems to give them at least a little bit of calm. Mental illness is difficult to deal with on a good day.

Words of wisdom

We have a Wellness Fair coming up this week where the class shows off their garden beds. I wanted them to share some words we could put on a poster nearby, words about this garden they’ve been caring for all season.

Two quotes stand out to me:

“To me, it’s all good for the mind and stability.”

“When I look at the garden, smell the vegetables, and feel the soil, I come back into myself and appreciate being alive.”

Gardening has provided therapy for these clients. It’s given them “children” to watch over—something to check each week from seed to seedling to flowering and fruiting. They find some semblance of calm in caring for and learning through this garden.

What greater gift can a garden produce?