Nadia McCaffrey – “Let’s do this!”

Growing and Healing at the Vets Center

At the New Jersey Veterans Affairs Medical Center near Newark, there are vegetable gardens, cared for by patients who find the process of tending living plants for feeding others to be a healing way of interacting with the world. In this article from the New York Times, “After War, Finding Peace and Calm in a Garden,” reporter Peter Applebome describes how the idea of starting a gardening program came into being.
It began with Jan Zientek, who specializes in urban gardening with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Roseland, and Thurston Mangrum, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran, who was in a substance abuse treatment program at the medical center.
Five years ago, Mr. Mangrum took a course that Mr. Zientek taught to residents of the Newark Housing Authority and later joined its master gardener program.
Mr. Mangrum figured, even with severe limitations of space, why not do something similar at the medical center? The veterans did some landscaping and ground work and then began tilling 20-by-50-foot plots between the buildings that had been converted from grass to raised vegetable beds.
It began with Jan Zientek, who specializes in urban gardening with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Roseland, and Thurston Mangrum, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran, [...]