MICHELE SCOTT

How I Became a Prison Gardener

FROM The Marshall Project

 

AS A GARDENER in a prison I know a considerable amount about a few plants, the plants that have been in captivity along with me. We have been sharing the same confined space for decades. When you have been around someone for 24 years, you pick up a few things about what they like, what their needs are, what it takes to make them happy or what to do when they are sick.

This is not a one-way relationship. By observing, studying, and tending to the plants, I have reconnected with myself. Seeing them thrive and grow and live has opened a window for my guilt, my self-hatred from the ever-present fact that I took two lives.

And with all the hard work of establishing a garden, it is as if I created new time. All the drudgery of gardening has created time for thinking—about how I ever had gotten to where I’d gotten to begin with. As the years have unfurled in the garden, I have become a nurturer, at least in my own heart, and my remorse has begun to serve a purpose.

But it did not start out that way. At first, kneeling in the dirt outside my housing unit and preparing a place for that first marigold was a means of carving out personal space—an effort to be left alone, to get free, if only for a moment. It came from my inability to handle my new environment.

There were few birds; I did not see my first seagull until a few years into my time. A rabbit came and went.

 

A Beginning

 

In October of 1991, after they mowed the Reception Yard lawn for the first time in almost a year, I was part of the volunteer inmate crew that swept up the blades of grass. They did not give us rakes to use—just brooms, bare hands, and plastic bags.

I can remember the tang of the lawn’s scent in the air. It was familiar, reminding me of home, Saturday mornings, picnics. Yet it was contained within the 40-yard circumference of a prison I would call “home” until I died.

By that time, I had found that prison had a culture unto itself, with customs and unwritten codes of expected behavior everywhere I turned. When you saw something going down (drugs snorted off the counter in the Laundry Room; or a quarter gram of dope getting sold at 300 percent profit; or a fight jumping off in the Port-a-Potty), you “saw nothing.” No staring; no slowing down. Getting noticed might mean your room would get searched, and they would confiscate the “pruno” (inmate-manufactured alcohol) that your bunkie was brewing under her bed. And your bunkie would get pissed at you, not the officer.

No staring, no slowing down. Responding was what drew the officers’ attention.

So what could I put my attention on? I had been a gardener before I was inside, so after that day collecting the grass, I applied myself to the front yard of my housing unit.

I remember how solitary it was outside, how quiet. There were never any birds. The bare dirt was not adorned. It was muddy, uneven. It contained remnants from the prison’s construction—bits and pieces of concrete, rebar, wood, and nails, familiar things in an unfamiliar setting.

Clearing the dirt was a beginning, an unconscious permission for me to clear the insides of myself. I was desperate, frantic, for anything to be present inside of me but self-hatred and ceaseless guilt—the sweeping and unmanageable awareness that I had taken life.

 

The Life of Physical Things in Prison

 

But the building blocks I needed were now deemed both contraband and weapon material.

This was another frequent lesson in my prison education, when the secret life of everyday objects was revealed. Every solid thing in this place was warped and twisted, viewed by the officers as having ulterior possibilities that I, in my new role as prisoner, was expected to “be up on.” It was a given that I was “up on” the fact that the brown plastic cup I was issued to take with me to my meals was actually a favored utensil for cutting cheeks, noses, and foreheads when in a fight with another woman.

To this day, I keep an eye on the inmates I pass on a walkway—perhaps that one over there who is gesturing too energetically. I veer away from her, just in case.

I never said the officers were wrong.

 

The Opportunity

 

A year after I arrived in prison, I was scheduled to have my annual program review. I knew my available job assignments were Auto Body Repair, Welding, Upholstery, Cosmetology—and Vocational Landscaping.

I knew which job I wanted. My patch outside my housing unit was waiting.

When I walked into the conference room, I saw the five committee members facing me. I took a deep breath. Then I said it as simply as I could: I enjoyed gardening and I really liked plants.

I saw a slight smile on the Inmate Assignment Lieutenant’s face. Perhaps he was paying attention.

The next day, I received a job ducat—assigning me to Vocational Landscaping. From then on, the Landscaping Building and adjacent greenhouse were my sanctuaries.

 

How to Start a Garden in Prison

 

It is all about your interactions with staff. Whether it’s asking for a “one-way” to get back into your room after the designated time has passed, or trying to get back out the door again in the morning—at 7:00 a.m.—to go play in the dirt, your housing officer holds all the keys.

After all, I was a Close B Custody inmate, which meant that I was at a higher “level of staff supervision required to ensure institutional security and public safety” and that my “activities shall be within the confines of the approved program housing unit.”

What that really meant was I was not supposed to be let outdoors by myself, and certainly not unsupervised. But my staff observed that they had a stressed-out newbie LWOP inmate on their hands, and that being outside seemed to keep me sane.

 

Welcome to Hardpan

 

Do you know what hardpan is? It’s a layer of hard soil cemented by almost insoluble construction materials that restrict the downward movement of water and roots.

To dig into that hard ground, I used plastic spoons, can lids, the metal plate that screwed the mop head into the mop stick. Anything I could get my hands on.

But I didn’t care. It was a distraction, a kind of half-freedom from the constant loop always sounding in my thoughts: I’m here forever, and will never be free, I’m here forever and will never be free. That loop began each morning the moment the cinder blocks greeted me.

So I welcomed the hardpan, the exhausting labor. I pored over the textbooks at Landscaping, teaching myself about soil composition, the importance of soil aeration, and what substances it takes to make “good” soil.

I realized I needed to introduce some sand into the hardpan. Where to get sand? There were no garden store outlets in prison.

But while waiting in line behind the Work Change processing building, I noticed that a construction project was going on in the kitchen. There were sandbags on the ground to keep the water away from the inmate dining area. There was the sand I needed!

But I looked at the size of the burlap sacks, then looked down at my pants pockets. Not gonna happen, I thought. I would have to get this sand on the up-and-up. But who to ask?

 

Unwritten Rules

 

Another unwritten rule I was learning was that the apathetic staff are the best to deal with. As long as they don’t have to work harder, and they are not “fronted off” (meaning that no unwanted attention is drawn to them), then these staff will let you handle what you need to handle.

(As for us, we inmates become known for how we do our time. The staff categorize us—some of us are “management concerns”; some are “dope fiends”; some are “ass kissers”; and some are “Polly Programmers,” the good girls who are doing programs all the time. Early on, I was known for my mouth and my attitude. But now I was becoming the “Plant Lady.”)

After explaining to a guard why I was so interested in the sand and what I was going to use it for (and with a promise to return the burlap bags), I was allowed to empty out the bags, with the help of a friend, and collect the sand.

 

I Get a Tractor

 

The landscaping program had a full set of tools, materials, and equipment. There was even a mini-tractor with an attachable loading cart.

Work crews were often assigned to go prune rosebushes, privet hedges, or install plants in front of the housing units. Part of my job was to load whatever we needed for those projects onto the loading cart and drive it to wherever it needed to go. Many times the staff saw me drive by with potted plants loaded into the back of my cart.

What they didn’t know was that I often hid hormone powder, seed packets, a hose spray nozzle, plant fertilizer, and even worms (which would also improve the quality of the hardpan) in the bottom of those pots, hidden in the soil. I dropped my hidden supplies off at my unit and then continued on my way. The staff didn’t have a clue.

It was the art of procurement, the act of liberating something from its captivity in one place to bring it someplace else, usually nearer to me.

When I read in one of my gardening books that vermiculite and perlite were soil amendments, I knew I would have to procure them. But how? The bags of this stuff were five feet long, three feet wide, and very bulky. There was no way to sneak them through Work Change, as I had with the worms. It had to look legitimate, at least at first glance. And that was what I was counting on—that staff would look only once at me, and then move on.

Timing my drop-offs was most important of all—when were certain staff taking lunch? Who had called in sick? I had to be watchful for opportunity.

So I was—and not only did I get the big sacks, I also got loads and loads of cinder blocks, which I needed to make a barrier around my plants. The material of the walls imprisoning me were becoming useful in my garden.

 

The Payoff

 

Here is why I push so hard to create my garden.

It is those moments when I shed the skin of an inmate, and feel the sunshine directly on me and listen to the droning bees as they tumble through the circuit of flowers planted months before.

Rabbits now lay supine in my garden and even near the walkways. And the birds that were once uncommon have come to join me too. It is common now to have to duck and take cover under a jacket or folder when an immense flock of gulls leaves its perch atop the dining hall, and swoops toward me. They have become my companions, encouraging me to come outside on a warm day and leave behind whoever I was before.

After two decades, I have learned the difference in birdsong—from the agitated pitch of white-crested house sparrows, fussing as they chase each other through the small bushes, to the excited chirping of the gulls when they realize water is available. A simple delight for me is to observe the splashing of these tiny feathered animals when a small pool of water collects in a shallow in the ground.

I glimpse a bird just being a bird.

And within these moments of observation, I am not thinking about this place. I do not see the concrete buildings encircling me, or notice the fencing topped with razor wire. My ears are closed to the arguments—about dope, or “prison love”—that drift along the walkway.

The innocence of creatures being their true selves offers me a diversion, though temporary, from the truth that another year has passed here in this place of sorrow. I am in that shared moment with the birds. Water cascades upon my feathers, my beak dipping into rivulets of water. For an instant I am free like the creatures I watch so closely.