Garden helps Catoosa County Jail inmates grow responsibility, resourcefulness

Leander Johnson, Jason Hughes and Tim Kelly, from left, discuss their garden and the work they put into it at the Catoosa County Jail.
Leander Johnson, Jason Hughes and Tim Kelly, from left, discuss their garden and the work they put into it at the Catoosa County Jail.

To donate

If you would like to donate to the Catoosa County Jail garden, call 706-965-6862 ext. 1117. Vegetables, berries, melons, herbs, flowers that attract pollinators, seed, fertilizer and mulch are welcome.

The tale of the juicy ruby red tomatoes is a saga.

Ace Hardware was going to toss the dying plants into a dumpster when Catoosa County Jail Sgt. Rhonda Wilson rescued them and gave them to three inmates, who resurrected them back to life.

And the tomatoes are just one crop being cultivated. At first glance, the lush garden seems like a hallucination, but it is the result of hard work, devotion and resourceful intelligence from the three gardener/inmates - Leander Johnson, Jason Hughes, Tim Kelly, who praise Wilson as their mentor. They are often planting, watering and reaping before 8 a.m. and continue through the scalding heat until guards insist they come in from the noon sun.

In the 40-by-100-foot garden, stalks of silver corn tower over emerald okra and zucchini vines scattered with pale yellow blossoms. Pink flowers bloom on vines alongside strawberries while Sweet Babies watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers and tomatoes ripen nearby. The potatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and jalapeno and Serrano peppers have been harvested are placed in the wheelbarrow on their way to the jail's kitchen.

The garden doesn't have a big enough crop to make an garden-born entree for each of the jail's 250 inmates, but that's not even a realistic goal given the tight budget and available ground.

"We don't count on the garden to feed all our inmates; their meals don't depend on the crops," says Sgt. George Walton, another jail officer. "The garden vegetables and fruit are an extra treat in addition to the meals."

In fact, the other inmates consider the freshly picked produce such a treat, the kitchen staff must be creative on how to distribute the food. For example, the kitchen crew cuts crisp cucumbers into enough slices for each inmate to have a small cup of cukes.

Charles Lackey, head chef in the jail's kitchen, discovered the fairest way to divide the just-picked veggies among inmates was to make soup. A small Dixie cup full of the soup is fresh with a rich, thick broth. Tyler Domino, one of the jail's cooks, insists that food from the garden cannot be compared to store-bought.

"You can tell the difference in vegetables that sit on a store shelf and ones that are picked fresh from the garden, even after they've been cooked in soup," Domino says proudly.

Finding purpose

On a recent day, a keg of ice water sits on a nearby table, available to Johnson, Hughes and Kelly when they need to hydrate; they're also allowed to take breaks in the shade. But the three insist they don't see the work as a hardship. It's a plum job, they say, to weed, compost, plant and harvest in 98-degree heat and thick humidity.

"This is peaceful for me; there's privacy and calm enough for me to focus and think about my life," Hughes says as bees and golden butterflies zip around marigolds planted to attract pollinators. "I feel like my skills are a good fit for this job. I'm doing work that makes life a little better for people here."

This is the second year inmates at the jail have tended the garden. Wilson says the first year got off to a bumpy start because three different inmates were in charge of the project and none of them had much gardening experience. Johnson, Hughes and Kelly did.

"My favorite uncle had a huge garden and I used to help him work all the time I was growing up," Johnson says.

Kelly is a car mechanic by training but has done landscaping and gardening. And Hughes' family owned a farm and a produce stand.

"I helped out at both when I was a kid and an adult," he says. "Now I frame houses for a living. But I think this work here added to my skills because now I could help out with landscaping and designing and planting gardens."

Wilson views them as three men who are earning trust in an effort to put missteps that brought them here in the past. Hughes was convicted of burglary; Johnson was convicted of shoplifting and fleeing from and hindering police. Kelly served time for a parole violation and was recently released.

"To become a gardener, the men had to prove they were resourceful, good at problem-solving and possessed a strong worth ethic," Wilson says.

"I'm proud of what they've accomplished. But I'm even prouder to see the way the garden brought out their best qualities and made those qualities stronger. They take the work seriously. They even buy gardening books to study."

Johnson read a book that suggested talking to plants to encourage them to grow. He took the advice and sings to the tomatoes and squash.

Walton also has seen a dramatic change in the three inmates.

"The men work together as a team now; when they first got into the garden, they didn't want to listen to each other," he says. "Each man thought he knew best. Now they share ideas and help each other out."

Beginnings

The garden was mostly built with scraps and castoffs from stores and churches and, when castoff materials aren't quite enough to keep the project going, Wilson often pays for supplies from her own pocket.

But the community was behind the project from the first, Wilson says.

The dirt was very poor at first, so Wilson turned to a close friend, David Hoover, who brought a dump truck loaded with mulch from his own yard; Mashburn Tree Service gave three loads of chipped wood, also for mulch.

A Catoosa County deputies let the men use his tractor. Wilson's buddies since childhood, Brent Henshaw and Sammy Lewis bought a truckload of bagged top soil and donated it. Chattanooga Food Bank gave tomato plants and seed, while Ace Hardware in Ringgold, Ga., donated assorted plants, including the tomato plants that were destined for the dumpster before Wilson rescued and brought back to the jail.

Charles Saunders, an experienced gardening instructor, came to the jail and gave free lessons to the three gardeners.

Wilson wryly notes that "people in my church are going to start running when they see me because I'm always asking if they have something they can donate for the garden."

She and her gardeners say they want to keep the garden program going through fall and winter with vegetables such as squash, pumpkins and cabbage. She also would like to get permission for an indoor herb garden full of oregano, basil, sage, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, peppermint and parsley. The men are hoping they will get more donations of everything they currently plant so they can grow a bigger garden next spring.

"When I get out, I want to volunteer at the Community Kitchen and show the people there how to plant and grow a garden," Johnson says. "I'm a good cook, so I could also give them some tips about how to cook what they grown."

Contact Lynda Edwards at 423-757-6391 or ledwards@timesfreepress.com.

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