Garden Time

In 2011, Garden Time's Co-founders worked with inmates at the men's maximum-security facility at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions to build a garden in an empty section of prison yard. Since then, we have added two more gardens at other facilities within the prison complex, and trained some 300 incarcerated men and women to become skilled gardeners. While producing thousands of pounds of produce for use in the prison kitchens, our participants have also gained self-confidence, a positive outlook, and a completely new connection to nature. In 2017 we expanded our work to include more explicit job preparation. The Garden Time to Work pre-employment program at the men's medium-security facility offers important life skills and job training for the green industry with reentry planning and support. In 2022 we ran in-prison programming for approx. 30 incarcerated gardeners.

As an extension of reentry support, Garden Time employs training graduates to be part of a tree care crew for young trees in the Silver Lake neighborhood that were planted during the training as well as those PNPP has designated as needing maintenance. They assist with watering, pruning and installing tree pit protection where they may be more vulnerable to vehicle damage. This young tree maintenance is critical to build and maintain the tree canopy to ensuring that the neighborhood experiences all the benefits urban trees provide. Being part of the tree maintenance crew provides seasonal part-time employment for Green Reentry trainees--all formerly incarcerated, predominantly people of color--as they search for permanent employment. In 2022, three training graduates participated in the tree maintenance crew.

In 2021, after ten years of teaching garden programs at the ACI and to extend opportunities for released students, Garden Time created the Green Reentry Job Training program, an 8-week green industry job training focused on tree stewardship, work readiness and environmental justice for formerly incarcerated Rhode Islanders. Through our partnership with Providence Neighborhood Planting Program and Groundwork Rhode Island, trainees plant trees and gain valuable employment experience. We focus on trees because in the green industries, tree service tends to offer year-round work and a living wage. Also, tree equity is a relatable environmental justice concept for trainees who tend to live in lower-income, lower canopy neighborhoods. Finally, planting and maintaining trees is consistent with many formerly incarcerated individuals' desires to, as one student put it "give back and help in the positive development of the same communities I helped to destroy." In 2022, The Green Reentry Job Training program had 11 graduates