Pleasant Hill, Newton County, Arkansas

Transcription

you're pulling sod out as you go along for Julie Stevens and her team of landscape architecture students at Iowa State this summer's project at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville has been a great learning experience but for some in the women living inside this facility helping and learning alongside the ISU students has truly been a life-changing experience after I got involved started be really interested in landscape design and the plants. I plan further my education when I get out of prison. Stevens and her crew landscape architecture students have been working with the offenders to redesign outdoor spaces at the prison for the past three summers they put in outdoor classroom seating planted trees and native prairie plants and created a decompression area for the guards. this year their big project included planting nearly an acre herb and vegetable gardens the women just have have done incredible things at the Gardens the production gardens are doing great and their heavy crop there things that the kitchen uses often and they won't have spent any time in refrigerated semi they'll be right off the yard here and they probably spent sometime helpign that plan to grow so it's going to taste that much better for them the production garden could replace as much as sixty thousand dollars of the prison's food budget with fresh produce grown right on the grounds but for some the offenders working with the ISU students is the real reward for people that come up to me they are like wow you're doing great you know I'm that mean a lot people say you're only getting paid so and so. It doesn't matters not about the pay it's about it's about the people have to be here the rest of her life is here this is for them we have women who are interested in pursuing careers we just have women who find this to be a really restorative they like giving back and they love the idea that they're growing food for their fellow inmates and they they appreciate that we're out here working with them and it's been a great opportunity for both the students and the offenders to learn more about growing plants and more importantly growing as people when you can engage in something positive together and just work at something on you really learn you you get to know people really well when I come in here I don't think about the women's crimes I don't think about their past I think about the person standing in front of me and I know that he can be better and do better and I know that we can have an impact on that for Iowa State News Service, I'm Dave olson.