I worked as a costume designer for 30 years, half of that at Late Night with Conan O’Brien. In 2009, when the show moved to Los Angeles, I was 55 and, since my husband has a career in New York, I didn’t want to leave. It was the perfect time to make a change. I had the luxury of health insurance through my husband, so I didn’t have to make any decisions immediately.
I had always been interested in prison reform. We have a correctional system with little or no correction involved. I looked to volunteer at Rikers Island in New York City, the second largest prison complex in the U.S. Of its 12,000 inmates, the vast majority are detainees, awaiting trial for up to 5 years.
I heard about the prison horticulture program. I’ve been a gardener all my life and thought “This is something I know how to do.” It required taking a class at the New York Botanical Garden and working toward a certificate in horticultural therapy. It was a ton of work but when I finally went to the garden, I was blown away – a two-acre oasis of vegetables, flowers, trees, a pond with fish inside a desolate 400-acre prison complex.
Our students are not allowed to have knives, so they grow things that generally do not require chopping or cutting, from salads to peppers to pumpkins, and they tend apricot and cherry trees. We teach flower arranging in the summer, as well as seed starting in the spring and seed saving in the fall.
We are creating a relationship between people and plants, which studies have found can be therapeutic and calming. I have never ever been afraid inside the garden when I’m with the students. Getting into the garden is another story – we have a long walk through a very tough jail and I have been afraid when there’s a lockdown or an alarm.
I’m older than almost all the students and I bring a lot of life experience to the table, not just gardening. When they are about to be released, we talk about what their plans are, where they’ll be living, and how to keep themselves from coming back.
It’s easy to write a check to your favorite cause. To carve out from your personal time and energy is something completely different. I’ve now taken on another task, starting a horticulture therapy program in Brooklyn for chronically homeless individuals with mental illness which is equally rewarding.