Growing Season

"Imagine explaining asexual propagation to someone who has 65 arrests for prostitution," says jail counselor Cathy Sneed Marcum, creator of a gardening program at the San Francisco County Jail. Surprisingly, the inmates, both male and female, have taken quite a shine to garden work, and you can hear the pride in their voices as they show us around their garden. Begun in 1982, Marcum got the idea for the garden after reading a copy of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which a friend gave to her while she was in the hospital with kidney problems. Racism, sexism, class distinctions, all melt away in the garden (or else the offender is back in the cell). Marcum and her co-worker Arlene Hamilton teach the basics of gardening and throw in a few psychology lessons along the way. The analogies between the plant world and the human world have crept into the prisoners' vocabulary. One male prisoner says: "I was like a dead tree when I first came here." A female prisoner remarks: "I come out here to talk to my flowers--tell 'em I love 'em." The harvest from the prison garden goes to community food banks and soup kitchens, and the jail has set up a garden on the outside for ex-prisoners who want to pursue their horticultural skills. Much of the credit for the success of the program clearly belongs to the determination of Cathy Sneed Marcum. One prisoner, clearly moved, says of her: "she told us we did something bad, but that doesn't mean we're bad people. I will always love her for that." Nicholas Wellington's award-winning Growing Season is an outstanding documentary that says a lot about spirit, hope, and love in a place where you might not expect it. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (Available from: Bullfrog Films, Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; (800) 543-3764.)