Growing the future at Sierra Girls Center Garden

Growing great produce is only the secondary goal at Sierra Girls Center Garden in Santa Rosa, where teens on probation learn to tend plants while volunteers work alongside them, nurturing the girls as much as the greenery.

While most community gardens are all about the kale and cucumbers, at Sierra volunteers plant and prune with a small group of girls whose crooked paths have led them to this oasis of aspiration. Living in a group home on site, the girls attend the local high school and then spend time on Tuesdays and Saturdays learning to grow crops and make meals from their bounty.

“Most of the girls have never experienced how things grow,” garden coordinator Caroline Keller said. “It instills in them the joy of being outside.”

It also jump-starts their self-sufficiency skills. “When they leave here, even if they have a hotplate and a microwave in their apartment, they’ll know how to make a meal,” she said, pointing out that most of the residents are more familiar with fast food.

There are currently 37 volunteers committed to a minimum of two hours a month working in the garden and kitchen, although many, including Keller, donate significantly more time. The girls get first choice from what’s grown and then the volunteers take what suits their taste buds.

Between April and November, seedlings, fruits, vegetables and herbs are sold on Saturdays, raising funds for such necessities as fertilizer. Prices are kept low - a hefty handful of rosemary goes for 50 cents - and they try to tempt with hard-to-find delicacies like fenugreek and dudhi (also known as bottle gourd). Whatever excess is grown is given each week to F.I.S.H. (Friends in Sonoma Helping), a food-sharing organization in the Sonoma Valley, adding a lesson in charitable giving to the girls’ experience.

The girls are between 14 and 18 years old, and there is a maximum of six girls. They have all been convicted of a crime, and they also have almost always been raised in challenging home situations.

“These girls were victims before they were criminals,” Keller, who has 42 years’ experience as a school principal, explained. She said drug-dealing parents, gangs, and sometimes even forced prostitution previously were part of their life picture.

The idea is to keep those elements in their past by exposing the teens to new possibilities.

“It’s fun coming here and seeing everyone. I love being with all the garden people,” said one of the girls currently in residence, who added that her favorite of the produce they grow is tangelos, and that she enjoys making cookies in the kitchen.

Volunteer kitchen coordinator Janet Schade teaches the girls not just how to cook meals, but how to freeze excess garden food. They use the frozen shredded zucchini or persimmon pulp to make bread later on, and freeze the loaves of bread. The breads are sold at their produce stand or used for gifts.

Once a month they prepare a sit-down dinner for invited guests, served at a lovely donated formal dining set. They set a proper table and cook from the garden, and recently served stuffed bell peppers. “It helps them learn to have an adult conversation,” Schade said, and learning social skills is important.

Recently the girls entered their homemade Crispy Date Truffles in a cook-off contest, winning second place in a people’s choice awards contest and $750 in prize money. They also made 30 centerpieces from garden flowers, selling them for $5 each for a fundraising dinner. They used their profits for a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The three-quarter-acre garden, located next to the Sonoma County Juvenile Hall, has 17 fruit trees, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries, grapes, a flower-cutting garden, multiple herbs, a full range of seasonal tomatoes, peppers and squash grown in raised beds, a fall pumpkin patch and even a beehive.

The primary, longtime financial supporter of the garden is the Valley of the Moon Rotary, which most recently paid for a second greenhouse. It has also provided a large shed, infrastructure for drip irrigation and fencing.

Rotarians along with garden volunteers completely refurbished a large classroom adjacent to the garden, a place for doing projects with the girls, including sewing.

“What keeps us coming back is the positive change we see in the girls,” volunteer Pat Randall said. For years she has sat at the produce table on Saturdays, collecting dollars and dimes and knowing in her heart that what this garden is growing is a promising future for the girls.

Or, as Keller puts it, “It’s like watching a flower open.”

The Sierra Girls Garden Center is located just west of Juvenile Hall in east Santa Rosa. (From Santa Rosa, take Highway 12 east toward Sonoma and turn left on Pythian Road. Go past Los Guilicos Road and then turn left on Eliza Way and then left at the compost piles to the garden. There are signs at the Highway 12/Pythian Road intersection and at Eliza Way directing you to the garden.)

The garden opens for the season April 11, 9 to 11 a.m. For directions and information about volunteering, go to sierragarden.org or email SGCGardenClub@sonic.net. Due to potential confusion, the website warns not to seek directions through Google maps or Mapquest.