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Back To The Garden: How Green Thumbs Help With Addiction Recovery

Meredith Jensen is doing some gardening on a sunny day in a secluded part of Athens, Ohio.

“I’m working on our pollinator garden beds,” she said. “Which are a bunch of fun flowers that’ll help attract butterflies, bumble bees, you name it.”

Her partner Jamie Betit pushes a full wheel barrow to fill the other raised beds.

Jensen and Betit are the Executive Director and Outreach Coordinator –respectively– for the Chrysalis Garden, a 12 bed therapy garden at the new Serenity Grove Women’s Recovery House.

They, like other organizations battling the addiction crisis in the Ohio Valley region, are experimenting with horticultural therapy as a way to help people battling a substance use disorder on the path of recovery.

“The same time as you’re growing yourself as a person, you can physically grow food that nourishes your body but also nourishes your soul,” Jensen said.

The plan is for residents of Serenity Grove to work in the garden during their leisure time. While most of the beds are empty now, they soon will be full of all kinds of produce for the home.

Other addiction treatment and recovery organizations around the Ohio Valley region have bought into the idea. The Hope Center in Lexington is just one of the many organizations that have therapy gardens in Kentucky. And the Gro Huntington projectin West Virginia, run by Jeannie Harrison, was one Betit said they looked into when developing their own project.

“We went down there to visit. That just really catapulted us to start moving forward,” Betit said “What her model was is where we would like to take some things eventually.”

“We’ve got horse and goat compost here that’s packed full of nutrients, topsoil and ash,” he said.

Meredith Jensen (left) and Jamie Betit prepare the Chrysalis Garden at Serenity Grove Women’s Recovery House in Athens, Ohio.

Horticulture As Therapy

The limited research on horticultural therapy looks promising. Most of the research has come from decades of the practice in Europe.

A 2011 study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health showed evidence that gardening helped participants in Sweden manage “diverse diagnoses, spanning from obesity to schizophrenia.”

A 2014 study published in the journal for Neurodegenerative Disease Management followed up at sites across Scandinavia. And the results suggest that gardening could help participants manage behavioral health issues that often accompany substance use disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

Janalee Stock, a former nurse and a member of the Women For Recovery board that operates Serenity Grove, said the group is excited for residents to add another program to the center’s holistic approach to recovery.

“We’re not just physical beings,” she said. “We’re mental, emotional, spiritual, social. Doing something like the gardening addresses other aspects of recovery and taking care of yourself.”

Planting Seeds

And she feels the community’s support for the project will go a long way toward success for both the garden and the residents.

“Another aspect of what is challenging for someone that has been addicted is the stigma,” Stock said. “By having that community support, there’s that underlying message that ‘We care about you. You’re important. You don’t have to hide. You’re part of our community.’”

Volunteers helped build the raised beds, local companies donated supplies to help create the garden area and financial support continues to come in.

The Chrysalis Garden has a five-part plan for expansion of the project, with the residents one day taking over the day-to-day responsibilities.

A few of the additions Jensen and Betit have in mind include construction of a meditation area, a wider variety of produce and a program that gets the residents business experience by selling the produce to local businesses and restaurants.

But for now, Jensen is just ready to see what the residents grow.

“It’s what we produce with a purpose,” she said. “It’s produce because it’s vegetables but you’re producing something that has a purpose.”

Freeze Advisory for Most of West Virginia Sunday Night

Forecasters say Mother Nature is putting a chill on the outdoor growing season in West Virginia and several other states.

The National Weather Service has issued a frost advisory for most of West Virginia early Monday. The weather service says temperatures are expected to dip into the lower 30s in much of the state.

Homeowners are being advised to cover sensitive plants or bring them indoors to avoid being killed if left uncovered.

Freeze warnings have been posted for Michigan and parts of Wisconsin, while frost advisories also have been issued in parts of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio.

An Urban Agriculture Law Ruffles Feathers in Morgantown

Tracey Lea Frisch loves her pet chickens, which she keeps in her yard on the side of her house in the Hopecrest neighborhood in Morgantown.

“This is Pudding and Vanilla and Mr. Looster and Lucky and Star and Moonlight and that’s Roadrunner, and that’s Fluffy – the big one,” she said as she fed them grapes. “I have one broody; she’s pretending to have chicks. It’s not going to happen.”

But last fall, thirty of Frisch’s neighbors sued her, alleging that the chickens smelled bad, were noisy, ran wild and brought down property values. Locally, the chickens have become a sort of cultural phenomenon. They are now known as the “Hopecrest Chickens” – some dedicated community members have even created a Facebook page and a Youtube channel on their behalf. Fun aside, the issues brought up in the case represented a larger discussion about growing vegetables and fruits and raising livestock in cities, a practice known as urban agriculture.

More cities in the U.S. are experimenting with urban agriculture, by growing crops on roofs or indoors with the help of LED lighting. Rick Snuffer, the state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, said that the USDA’s push for urban agriculture isn’t only fueled by aesthetic and environmental concerns, but by a sustainable one too. As the country’s population grows, there’s less land on which to grow food to feed them.

Morgantown residents Jodie Rose and Jonah Katz dressed up as the Hopecrest Chickens for Halloween in 2015.

“There are six million dollars in food that has to be brought into West Virginia every year that could be grown here in West Virginia,” he said. “It’s imported from other states or countries. And, that’s one of the things the Commissioner of Agriculture is very concerned about – how can we create more of those crops at home?”

Yet urban agriculture is rare in West Virginia, and in Morgantown, a proposed urban agriculture ordinance combined with the Hopecrest Chicken lawsuit has sparked a prolonged debate between neighbors about who can garden what and where. The ordinance first entered the public’s eye in April 2015, and was modeled after an urban agriculture ordinance passed in Charleston.

“It was viewed as an opportunity to put land into productive use that was otherwise sitting vacant, and to encourage home gardeners and others to practice some of their own food production,” said Jim Kotcon, a professor of plant pathology at West Virginia University who also serves on the Morgantown Municipal Green Team. He helped draft the original version of the ordinance. “Given the long-running desire for fresh vegetables and fruits, and the ability to promote local foods, it was viewed as a positive opportunity and many viewed it as such at that time.”

Then, a couple of months before the Hopecrest Chickens lawsuit was served, city council discussed a more restrictive draft of the ordinance. It would put tighter limits on how much livestock residents could own, possibly require permits to build structures like doghouses or trellises and restrict how close those structures could be to the neighbor’s yard. Though some gardeners believe that this ordinance discourages urban agriculture, others appreciate some restrictions.

“They haven’t mowed. They have not weeded at all,” said Kevin Downey, a longtime Morgantown resident, of his neighbor’s front yard. “You can see the watermelons has grown through there so you can’t get a lawn mower in there. The trellis – you can see it’s made out of pipes, metals, plastics, pieces of wood, pieces of anything. I don’t know, personally I don’t think it belongs in the front yard.”

Axel Anderson, 10, picks raspberries from his mother’s garden in Morgantown.

Kotcon says the issue of who gets to garden what isn’t a petty one at all. On a global scale, being able to self-sustain is important to a country’s national security. On the backyard scale, he thinks gardening is a radical act, and being able to grow one’s own food especially resonates with young people.

“It is the fundamental right of each person to wrest a living from the land, free of any corporate control, working with nature to create their food and perhaps a surplus for sale and profit,” he said. “That is something inherently American.”

It’s unclear when Morgantown’s proposed ordinance will return to the city council agenda. But until then, some residents will continue doing what they love best – growing and eating the food they grow in their own backyards.

Gardeners Sought for Capitol Complex

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – The state is looking for gardeners who want to tend to flower beds at the Capitol Complex in Charleston next year.

     The program assigns specific areas to nonprofit community and civic groups. At least 15 flower beds are available.

     The duties consist of preparing the bed and planting flowers, weekly weeding and flower care. Volunteers must provide their own tools and remove dead plants in the fall.

     The application deadline is Dec. 31. Applications and guidelines can be obtained by contacting Capitol Grounds Manager John Cummings at (304) 957-7151.

These Groups are Reforming West Virginia's Food Economy

The phrase “food-desert” might sound like a landscape of sagebrush and armadillos, but it’s really a place where SlimJims, chicken nuggets and Slurpies count as dinner. A food desert can happen anywhere- we’ve all seen them. People who live in a food desert may be surrounded by food—fast food or convenient store hotdogs, instead of fresh, healthy food.

Even in rural West Virginia, where small farms still dot the roadside, fresh food isn’t available to all people. In some places it can take over an hour just to reach the next grocery store. Reawakening some of the old, small farm traditions– and bringing a new local food movement to West Virginia– is the work of five non-profits that were highlighted by the James Beard Foundation. Groups were chosen based on their work to bring healthy, local food to more people.

One of those chosen to be highlighted is the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, directed by Elizabeth Spellman.

“We focus on helping people connect with each other so they can educate each other and be stronger together,” said Spellman.

The coalition trains farmers and advocates for statewide policies that help nurture small farmers.

Spellman says that because West Virginia has the highest number of small farms per capita in the country, there is a unique opportunity here to help transform the local food economy.

Children with a YMCA camp helping find harlequin beetles in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston

“Yeah, and we’re uniquely positioned to show what a small farm state can do because we don’t really have that many large farms. We’re mostly small farms. And people relying on each other and working together.”

The Food and Farm coalition launched in 2010 under the West Virginia Community Development Hub, but recently the group has grown and is now its own nonprofit. Other groups that work in West Virginia that the James Beard Foundation chose to highlight were the the Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia– which hosts the Cast Iron Cook Off each January, the West Virginia University Small Farm Center, The Wild Ramp market in Huntington, and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which helps preserve heirloom seeds across the south. The organizations were all selected to be part of a guide, which launched yesterday on FoodTank and is meant to help chefs and consumers identify sources of local, healthy food.

Hannah McCune, age 11, helping in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston

Fall Herb Festival at Jackson's Mill

It’s fall, and for most gardeners it’s time to finish harvesting plants and begin preparing beds for the approaching frosts. For those who grow garlic, this is the time to plant bulbs. It’s also time to learn what you can do with some of the herbs you may have grown this year.

The Fall Herb Festival at Jackson’s Mill begins Friday. Twenty-seven teachers will conduct workshops about making herbal honey, growing edible gardens, and making simple cleaning and skin care products. There will be a workshop, taught by a massage therapist, about doing herbal facials.

Melissa Dennison is the president of the WV Herb Association and is organizing the festival. She says one of the new teachers this year is Victor Skaggs, of Marion County.

“He’s going to teach us how to develop your own kitchen garden, of the herbs that you use in your cooking,” Dennison said.

And if you’re new to cooking with herbs, there will be workshops for this too. “We really want to educate the public so they have some kind of awareness, and it’s very affordable.”

The festival is all open to the public, and costs $15 per day, or $20 for the entire festival. For members in the W.Va. Herb Association, the festival is $5.

The two day event begins Friday. That evening, Mimi Hernandez of Frostburg University will be the keynote speaker. She will be speaking about medicinal and edible plants of Appalachia.

For more information about registering for the Fall Herb Festival, click here or call Melissa Dennison, (304) 364-5589.