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.
photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times
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, 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.
Over 1,000 pounds of vegetables were harvested this past summer, all given to vets at the center and to a cafe in town that caters to veterans. This alone would make the gardening worthwhile, but the opportunity to work in the garden brings other rewards.
For many of the veterans, the experience has been less about growing food and more about learning about themselves. So Mr. Mourning has felt a special kinship with Josh Urban, a 30-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He had also found himself isolated, unable to fully reintegrate into the world outside the war zone, until tilling the soil with his fellow veterans helped him make his peace with life back home.
Patrick Corcoran, who served with the Marines in Lebanon, said: “It just lowers the volume in my head. It allows me to think on a rational level.”
t my head and body,” he says. “I have been undergoing treatment and therapy with the VA System and the progress is slow and tiresome.”
