Sprouting from a vacant 3 ½ acre lot in central Phoenix is an organic market garden where young people in the innercity are raising cut flowers and gourmet vegetables to sell to area restaurants, at Farmers Markets and to provide fresh vegetables to the needy. They are creating an urban oasis between two struggling neighborhoods, while learning marketable job skills in the fastest growing industry in the United States. They each have an opportunity to become certified by the Arizona Nursery Association while experiencing the basics of business first hand. Mentors from the neighborhoods, surrounding businesses and Master Gardeners are learning as much from the youth as vice versa.

The property is being loaned by one of the project’s primary sponsors, Samaritan Health System. Funding for the half time project coordinator was funded by Phoenix Newspapers Inc., the Phoenix Suns, and Samaritan. The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension provides expertise and leadership to the program. Other partners include the Greater Coronado Neighborhood Association, Garfield Neighborhood Association, Shepherd’s Seeds, Mountain States Nursery, the Arizona Nursery Association, and the Phoenix Boys and Girls Club. Guidance is provided to the garden project by an advisory board with representatives from the High Schools, Juvenile Justice and Probation, the Nursery Association, Neighborhood Services, Neighborhood Associations, and Community Leaders (young & old).

Background
The "Miracle Garden" began in 1994 as the vision of Master Gardener Lynn Town who read about successful gardening projects in other states addressing the needs of innercity youth. "Cabrini Greens" in Chicago, the "Food From the Hood" in Los Angles, "The Green Brigade" in San Antonio and other similar projects are teaching at-risk youth marketable skills in horticulture and business management, personal skills in teamwork, leadership, planning and responsibility, and pride of ownership and success.

Lynn recruited Samaritan Health Services, University of Arizona, Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, Chef's from Gourmet Restaurants, Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix, Coronado and Garfield Neighborhood Associations and a variety of organizations and individuals to form a core planning group. The "Miracle Garden" (so named by youth participants) will be a urban farm raising gourmet vegetables, fruit and cut flowers to sell to restaurants, Good Samaritan Hospital, a grocery stores and at a market stand at the garden. Samaritan Health Services has donated three and one half acres on 7th Street just South of McDowell. Young people from the surrounding community will plan, plant, manage, harvest and sell the produce. Proceeds will go toward salaries and scholarships for the youth participants as well as ongoing cost for managing the project.

Proposal
Young people on the planning team developed the following mission statement for the miracle garden:

To provide positive experiences and to help other youth be responsible
To create businesslike minds for youth
To earn college scholarships
To feed the homeless and give back to the community
To improve and cultivate the desert.

Project Title: The Miracle Garden

Project Leader: Chris Brusnighan, Instructional Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

Project Team Members:

Larry Tibbs, Extension Agent 4-H
Lucy Bradley, Extension Agent Urban Horticulture
Terry Mikel, Extension Agent Commercial Horticulture
Kai Umeda, Extension Agent, Vegetable Crops

Arizona Association of Landscape Architects
Arizona Department of Transportation
Arizona Nursery Association
Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix
City of Phoenix Solid Waste Management
Coronado Neighborhood Association
Eddies Grill
Garfield Neighborhood Association
Gentle Strength Coop
Harvest for Humanity
Maricopa County Master Gardeners
Mountain States Nursery
Phoenix Newspapers Inc.
Samaritan Health Care Systems
Shepherd's Garden Seeds
University of Arizona Cooperative Extension
Western Organics

Location of Project: 7th Street between Brill and Willeta (between the Garfield and Coronado Neighborhoods in Central Phoenix)

Critical Issues to be Addressed:

1. Job training and career development for at risk adolescents
2. Personal development in leadership, self esteem, communication, and team work
3. Community building in intercity neighborhoods

1. Job Training and Career Development.

A. Gain employment experience in the horticulture and retail sales businesses
B. Learn about employment opportunities in agriculture, horticulture and food distribution industries
C. Demonstrate responsible and dependable work patterns which will lead to good job references for future employment
D. Acquire the following marketable job skills:

1) design and installation of irrigation system
2) use of both organic and chemical methods for soil preparation and plant care
3) landscape design
4) use of water conservation methods

E. Learn entrepreneurial skills including but not limited to:

1) bookkeeping/accounting
2) marketing and public relations
3) retail sales

2. Personal Development

A. Develop team work and communication skills necessary for:

1) group designed and implemented work projects
2) working with adult volunteers, supervisors and vendors

B. Increase self-esteem through the success and altruistic experiences of:

1) contributing to beautification of urban areas
2) winning awards at State Fair and in other horticultural contests
3) donating food to Homeless Shelter in Garfield Neighborhood

3. Community Building

A. Develop community ownership and pride in the community garden
B. Strengthen relationships between neighbors through interaction in the garden
C. Create a positive focal point for the community to gather for workshops, festivals, fairs and outdoor theater
D. Involvement of family members, creating opportunity for quality time together

Horticulture has much to offer both in personal development and in employment opportunities. There are many important job skills which are difficult to teach in a classroom situation but which are readily learned in a garden. In addition, responsibility, planning, creativity, patience, and organizational skills are all critical to success as a gardener. Since agriculture is the largest industry in the United States with horticulture it's fastest growing component, there are many employment opportunities in the field. Also, it is an industry that one can enter with minimal skills and find numerous opportunities for job advancement . The participants will also be empowered to apply the entrepreneurial and business skills that they learn in managing the farmstand to creating their own small businesses, the number one source of new jobs in Arizona at the present time.

The youth garden project will be patterned after other successful projects in other states. For example, the Youth Farmstand Project run by Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey utilizes a retail farmstand to provide vocational and entrepreneurial training to economically disadvantaged youth. In San Antonio Texas the Bexar County Green Brigade program targets youth at risk and juvenile offenders teaching them xeriscape landscaping and water conservation in the Teaching Garden at Rodriguez Park. In Chicago the Cabrini- Green urban housing project created a market garden of gourmet vegetables and divides the profit between the children who participate.

In summary, juvenile offenders who participate in this program will receive specific job training in the horticultural industry and will learn entrepreneurial skills which can be utilized in any field of work. They will be able to take pride in their efforts to beautify the neighborhood, feed the homeless, and join forces with other residents and volunteer organizations in a movement toward constructive change in the inner city.

A "Miraculous" Learning Oasis in a Low Desert Garden

by Lucy K. Bradley
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension in Maricopa County

ABSTRACT
Master Gardeners facilitated the creation of an organic market garden managed by inner-city youth raising gourmet produce and cut flowers. Incorporating the key components of successful prevention and intervention programs the garden is benefiting the youth and the surrounding community. There are three main components to the program: 1) Management of the Garden; 2) Marketing of the produce; and 3) Job preparation and placement.

Key Words: youth gardens, school gardens, market gardens, entrepreneurial, vocational

INTRODUCTION

Sprouting from a vacant, three and one half acre lot in central Phoenix is an organic market garden where young people in the inner-city are raising cut flowers and gourmet vegetables to sell to area restaurants, at Farmers Markets and to provide fresh vegetables to the needy. They are creating an urban oasis between two struggling neighborhoods, while learning marketable job skills in the fastest growing industry in the United States. They are becoming certified by the Arizona Nursery Association while experiencing the basics of business first hand. Mentors from the neighborhoods, surrounding businesses and Master Gardeners are learning as much from the youth as vice versa.

METHODS

Setting:
The garden is in a rough community in central Phoenix, AZ. Area residents call the police three times more frequently than the residents of the rest of the metro area. Though fairly small geographically, 28% of all juveniles sent to court for violent crimes are from this community (Maricopa 1995). Gang related violence is particularly high. According to Rudy Mayfield, a juvenile probation supervisor, gun-fights and glue sniffing are dominant problems in this neighborhood. The school drop out rate is high, and the resulting low level of job skills feed the gang problem. Young people with no hope for success in traditional avenues turn to gangs and violence for a future. The community is primarily Hispanic and African American. In Maricopa County an estimated 70.8% of African-American males are referred to juvenile court by age 17 (Maricopa 1995). An estimated 42.9% of Hispanic males are likely to have a record by the time they are 17 (Maricopa, 1995). It is estimated that 33% of the children in the area live in single- parent homes In addition, the socioeconomic conditions within the neighborhoods are depressed. Only 49% of the homes are owner-occupied and parts of the community are highly transient with many resident leaving less than two years after they moved in. The average home value is significantly lower than the average for the city as a whole.

Plan:
Lynn Town, a Master Gardener who was inspired by the Cabrini Greene gardens, was the driving force behind the creation of the garden. A member of the targeted community she effectively utilized strategies identified in the Master Gardener school gardening plan (Guy, 1996) to inspire community, corporate, and professional support for the concept

A site and funding for a part-time coordinator were secured and the garden germinated. Recognizing the importance of community participation (Bradley, 1996), the first order of business was a full day team meeting with all adult and youth participants to focus the program. The following priorities were identified:

The Goals for the Participants:

1) Reduce juvenile crime in the Coronado and Garfield neighborhoods by developing a positive work ethic, teaching team building skills and building self esteem in participants. To successfully manage a garden requires planning, organization, diligence, persistence and many other skills. Nature is unforgiving so it is a wonderful classroom for "natural consequences" (e.g. if you don't water on time, every time, the plants die, and you have no harvest, and thus no profits).
2) By utilizing knowledge and guidelines from other successful gardens in San Antonio, Chicago and New Jersey, train participants with marketable skills and assist them in finding employment in the horticultural industry. The "Green Industry" is the fastest growing (pardon the pun) source of new jobs in the country. It is structured so than one can enter with little or no initial skill and move up rapidly as specific skills are acquired. It offers many opportunities for employment to young people including everything from nursery management, to landscape installation and maintenance.
3) Connect the youth with positive role models from their own community. The young people selected to participate in this project will be from the surrounding neighborhood. The neighborhood associations will recruit mentors from the community to work in the gardens with the youth. The mentors role will be to establish supportive relationships with young people. Since the youth and the mentors live in the same community they will be able to interact frequently and over time.

1) Create a community collaboration between the Garfield and Coronado neighborhoods, and Good Samaritan Hospital (the largest employer in the area) and other business and public agency partners.
2) Beautify an existing vacant lot by using xeriscaping and water conservation principles.
3) Increase community pride
4) Reduce vandalism
5) Reduce juvenile crime
6) Provide a direct benefit to the participating children and their families offering them free produce from the garden.

1) Create a model for a Youth Garden that can be implemented in other parts of the city and county. Provide documentation of the process and outcomes of this project that can be used by both internal and external evaluations.
2) Develop a niche in the Phoenix market for gourmet vegetables. Sell to the high end restaurants, grocery stores and have a roadside stand.
3) Through selling produce raise funding to partially support the cost of the program.

We believe in youth!
We believe in the importance of providing young people with opportunities to:

* succeed in challenging, meaningful, educational experiences;
* recognize and celebrate the diversity of their community;
* form meaningful relationships with adults in their neighborhood;
* develop a sense of connection to the overall community;
* help others.

We believe in the power of the garden as a vehicle for learning:

* critical life skills including patience, planning, nurturing, acceptance, responsibility, etc. each of which must be "learned" but rarely can be "taught";
* marketable skills in horticulture, the fastest growing industry in the county
* vocational/entrepreneurial skills including basic job skills, marketing, management, leadership, communication, teamwork, etc.
* nondiscrimination. Plants are not impressed by skin color, age, income level, religion, language or any of the other barriers common in our society.

We have tremendous hope for the future!
We believe that we can make a difference!

The three and one half acre lot was cleared of debris, fenced and cultivated to raise organic produce for local restaurants and a local farmers' market. The Garden is operated and managed by at-risk adolescents from the surrounding community. The youth are encouraged to be involved with all aspects of the operation from planning, planting and maintenance to sales, marketing and accounting (Bradley, 1996).

Participating youth work between four and eight hours per week. They also receive support training that includes the following:

1) How to plan, plant, cultivate and harvest produce in the garden,
2) Basic horticultural skills including irrigation, landscape design & maintenance,
3) Marketing and sales including customer service skills, retail client relationships and basic money management, and
4) Job preparation and readiness skills including writing a resume, interview techniques, and fundamentals of personal money management.
5) Leadership, communication and presentation skills

While we have not been tracking outcomes long enough to report any meaningful numbers the following areas are being examined: Juvenile crime within the targeted neighborhoods as measured by police statistics; truancy as measured by school records; misbehavior as measured by school, parent, & self-report; vandalism as measured by police, substance abuse as measured by police & self-report, school & self-report; running away as measured by police & self-report; the neighborhood residents' perception of their personal safety and general health of the community.

Participants change in knowledge, attitude and behavior:

Knowledge: Learned specific horticultural, entrepreneurial, job readiness, organizational, communication, employment, leadership, and community building skills,

Attitude: Developed self confidence, comradery, interest in learning and pride in what they have accomplished. Accepted responsibility for improving their community and take pride in progress beautifying the neighborhood, providing food for those in need, and creating constructive change in the inner city.

Behavior: Followed through on responsibility accepted and worked hard. Six of the participants have secured a job in the green industry making greater than minimum wage. Five of the participants from the first year came back as a mentors for the youth in the second year's program. One participate, has been accepted into an accelerated program earning college credit while in high school, is well on her way to not only being the first in her family to graduate from high school but the first to attend college.

In Adolescents at Risk: Prevalence and Prevention (Dryfoos), Joy Dryfoos reviews thousands of prevention and early intervention programs. She identifies the following key concepts as critical to the success of a program. Recognizing that each of these components is vital to achieving sustainable impact in a community, they became the framework around which the "Miracle Garden" is developed.

A. Early and Continuous, Intensive, Individualized Attention.
We have a high ratio of adult volunteers to youth to insure individual attention. We have actively maintained our focus on the two neighborhoods on either side of the garden, both for recruiting youth and for recruiting adult volunteers, despite continuous pressure to offer opportunities for individuals to commute to the garden. We have assisted with creating similar gardens at other sites, but persistently defend the importance of building community with the garden (Sommer, 1994), establishing links between the garden and the residents in order to build connections between residents. One of our goals is to forge ongoing relationships between young people in the community and adult mentors who are easily accessible and will continue to be available to them over time - their neighbors. Another important aspect is the tremendous benefit of having a role model who validates fascination with the environment and models environmental stewardship (Chawla, 1994).

B. Community wide, Multi-agency, Collaborative Approach.
The garden has a broad base of community support and involvement ranging from schools, to neighborhood associations to local businesses, to public agencies, and non- profit organizations.

C. Early Identification and Intervention
The community arbitration team regularly refers young people to the garden to perform community service. Several of these young people have stayed on to volunteer after their legally mandated time. The garden is focused on prevention and early intervention. Our goal is to provide young people with the knowledge, skills, confidence and support to propel them in to positive ventures.

D. Locus in the Schools
While we are not centered in the schools, we are strongly connected to the schools with several teachers serving on the steering committee and engaging their classes in garden related activities.

E. Administration of School Programs by Agencies Outside of Schools
The garden is administered by a half time program coordinator who works for the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. The coordinator is guided by a steering committed comprised of representatives of all the facets of the garden and its partners.

F. Location of Programs Outside of Schools
The garden is not on the school campus though there are activities in classrooms that are connected to the garden.

G. Arrangements are Made for Training Staff
Volunteer and paid staff (adults and youth) are trained in horticulture, leadership, public relations, and business management. The whole program is continuing education both formal and informal.

H. Social Skills Training
Social skills and public relations training for the youth has been critical to the success of the project both in selling the produce and in volunteer retention. Heavy emphasis has been placed on this component and the skills that the young people have learned will be valuable in every aspect of their lives.

I. Engagement of Peers in Interventions
Peer leaders and group responsibility, as well as personal accountability for out comes have helped all recognize the importance of their contributions and developed leadership skills.

J. Involvement of Parents
Some parents have been very involved, others only moderately or not at all. The program and the youth have benefited tremendously from the contributions of those parents who have participated in the program

K. Link with the World
This has been one of the most exciting components of the program for the young people. They have been on field trips to commercial growers to see how others are growing, harvesting and packaging produce. They have been to Farmers Markets and grocery stores to see how others are marketing produce and at what price. They have been on behind the scenes tours at restaurants that purchase their produce to see how it is used, what makes it more valuable for them, etc. Many of them who had no idea that a carrot was a root a year ago have a whole new way of looking at the world and a whole new understanding of its interconnectedness.

Partners include: Samaritan Health Systems, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Maricopa County Master Gardeners, Coronado Neighborhood Association, Garfield Neighborhood Association, Phoenix News Papers Charities, Inc., Boys and Girls Clubs, The Arizona Nursery Association, The City of Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department, North High School, Central High School, Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department, Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, The Arizona Department of Transportation, Mountain States Nurseries, Harpers Nurseries, Boy Scouts of America, Juvenile Probation Board, The Phoenix Suns, Native Seed Search, Shepherd Seeds, American Society of Landscape Architects.

REFERENCES

Bradley, L. K (1996) Tierra Buena: The Creation of an Urban Wildlife Habitat in an Elementary School in the Inner City. Children's Environments: theory, research , policy and applications 12(2), 245-249

Bradley, L. K. (1996) Bringing the Mountain to Muhomet: Creating an Urban Wildlife Habitat in the Inner City. The Proceedings for the National Symposium on People Plant Interactions sponsored by The Plant and People Council and the University of Texas, San Antonio, TX

Chawla, L. (1994) Out of the Garden, Into the World: Preparing Children to Care for the Earth. International School Gardening Conference sponsored by the Montessori Foundation and the American Horticulture Society, Arlington, VA.

Dryfoos, Joy Adolescents at Risk: Prevalence and Prevention,

Guy, Linda, Cromell, Cathy, and Bradley, Lucy: 1997 Success with School Gardens: Creating a Learning Oasis in the Low Desert, Arizona Master Gardener Press, Phoenix, AZ

Maricopa County Juvenile Court Center 1995 Annual Report

Sommer, R., Learey, R., Summit, J., & Tirrell, M. (1994) Social benefits of resident involvement in tree planting: comparison with developer-planted trees. Journal of Arboriculture 20(6), 323- 328

For more information on the Miracle Garden contact Chris Brusnighan, Instructional Specialist, 4-H Youth Development, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, 4341 E. Broadway Road, Phoenix, AZ 85040-8807, (602) 470-8086 ext. 359, chrisb@ag.arizona.edu

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The Miracle Garden
visitors since September 15, 1998

Last Updated September 15, 1998
Author: Lucy K. Bradley, Extension Agent Urban Horticulture, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Maricopa County
Web Site Manager: Cathy Rymer, Administrative Secretary, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Maricopa County
© 1997 The University of Arizona, College of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension, Urban Horticulture in Maricopa County
Comments to Cathy Rymer,crymer@ag.arizona.edu 4341 E. Broadway Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85040
(602) 470-8086 ext. 308

http://ag.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/html/youth/mirgdold.htm