Grace Grows

In the garden, when someone from the shelter wants to be involved, one of the first things we do is ask them if they’d like to reserve a raised bed for themselves. We keep paint, signs, and seeds, on site for this reason. Many folks like painting their own signs and add unique artistic elements to their beds, but others prefer we do it for them. When we paint their signs, we like to add little things that showcase their personality so they know we are listening and paying attention. Each name sign reflects something special about the gardener to whom it belongs before the plants are even grown. In crisis environments folks are often rushed through, and pauses for expressing empathy can be few and far in between. These systems can feel cold and if you’ve ever experienced them, it’s a specific kind of trauma, where people feel “managed” and alienated. However, in the garden we try to be intentional, fostering an environment where we can open our ears, eyes, and hearts again to one another again. Food and health are so important but it’s so much easier to get there, so much more humane, when people who are struggling feel seen.

A topic of conversation that often arises in the garden is how safety net systems seem to operate with the mentality that people deserve the bare minimum needed to survive, but the collective consensus we always arrive at is that this perspective is rooted in the punitive unjust way in which poverty is framed in our society. People experiencing homelessness deserve nice things too, even beautiful things. Our gardeners know better. In asserting this, people begin to take back their power. While they deserve so much more than this, we hope that this little plot of abundance will continue to remind them that they are worthy, that there is a world beyond the grit of the slab-being on hold for jobs, for food stamps, for Medicaid, the dirty looks from strangers and security guards, and metal detectors. Their identity is not homeless.