Incarcerated gardeners have been tending to their gardens since the season began this past spring. Despite delays in planting due to the unusually long and cool spring, the gardeners managed to planta variety of vegetables throughout the facility. Harvests occur each Monday morning with the bounty being donated to the Coastal Harvest food bank in Hoquiam. As of mid-September, they’ve grown and donated an amazing 6,000 lbs. of produce!
Gardens are placed throughout the facility wherever space is available. The incarcerated population has access to gardens in the main gardening hub and adjacent to individual living units. Photos by Sarah Larson.
The gardeners don’t just grow vegetables, they also incorporate wildflowers and perennials. While this helps beautify the grounds, it also does an incredibly important job of supporting the Stafford Creek honey bees. The bees forage for pollen and nectar, while also pollinating many of the vegetables.
A Stafford Creek honey bee visits a poppy flower in the pollinator garden.Photos by Sarah Larson.
Gardeners often experiment with new plant varieties, giving them the opportunity to learn more about the needs of different plants and how to solve issues with pests and diseases.Gardeners also collect and store seeds that are then sown the following year.
A wide variety of plants are grown in the hoop houses, which extend the growing season and protect plants from winter frosts. Maintenance crew gardeners, Robert Souza and Bob Covington, tend to the plants in one of the hoop houses (bottom left). Photos by Sarah Larson.
With sustainability in mind, the gardeners get very creative in repurposing old containers to grow plants in. Many items are repurposed, like recycling bins, water barrels, laundry tubs, as well as reusing black plastic nursery pots.
Clever and sustainable container solutions used throughout the gardens. Photos by Sarah Larson.A weekly garden harvest packaged in reusable crates and ready to be picked up by the food bank (bottom). Photo by Sarah Larson.
Seed collectors take turns viewing sagebrush seeds through a scope.
For the Saddle Mountain collection, many local native plant society members volunteered, and we were joined by a Juvenile Justice Center work crew. For both collections we had great weather. We enjoyed being outside learning about partnership efforts to restore shrub-steppe habitat for the continued existence of the imperiled greater-sage grouse.
We gathered seed from a subspecies of big sagebrush, called Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis). The seeds will be shipped and cleaned at the Seeds of Success seed cleaning facility in Bend, Oregon. Then it will sent back to Washington State to be used to grow next year’s crop of 60,000 Wyoming big sagebrush plugs in Coyote Ridge’s Sagebrush Nursery. We collected enough seed to create a reserve supply for the program, and share with other programs for research and conservation purposes.
Seed collectors smile from the field, surrounded by mature sagebrush.
Seeds of Success intern Shawna Kelley supported both collections, along with BLM botanist Molly Boyter. Seeds of Success supports BLM’s Native Plant Materials Development Program whose mission is to increase the quality and quantity of native plant materials available for restoring resilient ecosystems. The Wyoming sagebrush plugs will be planted onto fire damaged lands occupied by the greater-sage grouse. The entire seed collection and sharing process ensures the availability of genetically-appropriate seed for the recovery of the greater-sage grouse in Washington State. Funding for the program is provided by BLM in Washington D.C., the Institute for Applied Ecology coordinates programs regionally, and Sustainability in Prisons Project runs the Washington State program.
During seed collection, they discovered a dead lizard atop a spiny hopsage plant; it was probably intended for later eating by a loggerhead shrike (the Cornell laboratory describes the species as “a songbird with a raptor’s habits”).
Plant ecologist and horticulture educator Gretchen Grabber works with an inmate technician filling tray for seed sewing. Photo by CRCC staff.
This spring inmates started 20,000 sage brush plants at CRCC. As an essential component of the program, hands on training and lectures are provided for inmates and staff by plant ecologist and horticulture educator Gretchen Grabber of WNP and WSU TC. The primary goal of this project is to provide sagebrush for restoration of greater sage grouse habitat. Fifty percent of the sagebrush steppe habitat in the United States has been lost to large scale fires, conversion to other land uses, invasive cheat grass, and noxious weeds. Sagebrush habitat provides important shelter and food for the greater sage grouse and many other species. All of the sagebrush plants grown at CRCC will be planted on BLM land for restoration in the Palisades Flat Fire Project area near Wenatchee, Washington.
Facility staff and Superintendent Uttecht eagerly accepted the opportunity to host this new program with very short notice, resulting in a busy spring and summer at CRCC. It was impressive how quickly they built a hoop house, hired an inmate crew, prepared containers for planting, and planted sagebrush seeds.
This is what we want! A seedling sagebrush shows its beauty in the conservation nursery. Photo by Kelli Bush.
Educational lectures and workshops and plant care will continue into fall. Inmate crews, staff, and Gretchen Grabber will assist BLM in planting sagebrush late fall 2015/early winter 2016.
The Sagebrush Steppe Conservation Nursery program at CRCC is part of a multi-state restoration program including nurseries located in Oregon and Idaho corrections centers. The Institute for Applied Ecology (IAE) is a founding partner of SPP-Oregon, and they have provided the grant funding and training materials making this program possible.
Here, CRCC’s superintendent, CRCC staff, Getchen Grabber, and representatives from IAE, DOC headquarters, and SPP meet to hash out details critical to the program’s success. Photo by Kelli Bush.
Partners involved in the nursery recently met at CRCC to discuss program status. It was a productive meeting focused on planning for the rest of this season and dreaming about additions for next year. Thank you to each and every collaborator involved and we look forward to watching this program grow! Special thanks to Stacy Moore with IAE for bringing this opportunity to CRCC.