Healing grounds
Garden program aids people with mental illness
Story by Judy Farah • Photos by Applemoon Photography
Tucked away in an alley in downtown San Luis Obispo is a tiny store with big appeal. Growing Grounds Downtown, on the former site of a driveway between two buildings, is now filled with lush houseplants, succulents and drought-tolerant and native California plants. Colorful terra cotta planters line the shelves, along with bright packets of seeds, garden gloves, candles and handcrafted jewelry. Students from nearby Cal Poly San Luis Obispo stop by to pick up dorm decorations, while other customers browse for gift items. What makes this store different is the staff assisting these shoppers: Most suffer from severe mental illness. The workers, also called participants or clients, take part in a unique horticultural therapy program offered by Transitions-Mental Health Association of San Luis Obispo County. Workers engage in garden- or plant-based activities at the store and nearby nursery. TMHA has run both the store and the nursery for more than three decades for people with debilitating mental illness who want to re-enter the workforce. Sheri Grayson is one of those people. Suffering from lifelong mental illness, she fought drug and alcohol addiction. Grayson hadn’t held a job in 25 years and didn’t think she could. She started out slowly, working at the nursery, where she replants seedlings, prunes and waters plants, then gets them ready for sale. She also works one day a week at the downtown store.
Growing Grounds Downtown is squeezed into a small alley in San Luis Obispo, but brimming with plants, seeds, jewelry and other items, left. Christine Story, above, manages the gift shop and trains the mentally ill clients who work there.
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