While preparing plants such as agave attenuata for sale, Growing Grounds clients form bonds with one another at the 7-acre nursery.
Gardening as therapy “When I first got there, I was pretty broken. You know, I wasn’t mentally right,” Grayson said. “It took some time for me to get better and open up. I hadn’t been around people. I hadn’t worked, I hadn’t done any of that. My social skills were really not that great at the time. Growing Grounds has helped me a lot. It’s made me come a long way.” Christine Story has managed the Growing Grounds store for 15 years and has seen employees transform from being withdrawn and uncommunicative to interacting confidently with customers. “Someone might walk in and think they don’t have any skills or talent, but after a few shifts, they gain confidence and say, ‘I can do this. I can work on a computer. I can take care of plants. I can talk to the customers,’” Story said. The Growing Grounds program started in 1982 when Barbara Fischer, former TMHA executive director, founded a landscaping business and wanted to use the organization’s mental health clients as workers, to help them acquire jobs skills. Employees started by growing tomatoes and lettuce. TMHA was next able to acquire a 7-acre plot that became a nursery that sells flowers, shrubs, herbs, trees and other plants. The program currently has 65 workers, ranging in age from 18 to 70 years old, who work three-hour shifts a couple of days a week for minimum wage. Employees such as Grayson start each shift at the nursery by doing warm-up exercises, then gather in the barn around what they call the “enterprise”
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