Kansas City, Mo. ? Some staffers at Kansas City’s Municipal Correctional Institution first viewed Kathy Hoggard and the rest of the volunteer crew with suspicion and disbelief.

Gardening? In jail?

“At the beginning, I was, like, this ain’t gonna work,” said Alfred Pouncil, a corrections officer.

Hoggard, a Kansas University graduate and former longtime Lawrence resident, is part of a volunteer group that earlier this year set forth to break new ground at the Kansas City jail.

Headed up by corrections superintendent Nancy Leazer and Joanne Katz, a professor of legal studies at Missouri Western State University, the group wanted to transform a patch of barren yard within the institution’s fences into a garden.

In the process, they hoped inmates would maintain their hold on the real world, learn a bit about gardening and, ultimately, have a smoother return to society when they left.

“We don’t think this garden is going to change anybody’s life,” Hoggard said, “but you never know.”

A master gardener, Hoggard was recruited by Katz in February. Hoggard said she agreed to help, with one caveat – the volunteers would not create a garden, but would assist the female inmates as they planted and maintained the plants.

“It’s just been amazing,” said Hoggard, 61, who was director of the KU Information Center from 1972 to 1979 and retired seven years ago after a career in sales. “It’s been some women who grew up gardening and they see this is happening and they just throw themselves back into it, and others who have never tasted a real tomato and are afraid to put the first one in their mouth.”

The jail

The Kansas City Municipal Correctional Institution sits on a grassy patch not far from Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums. The municipal jail houses up to 200 inmates, about 75 percent men.

Inmates don’t stay long. The average stay is two to three months, Leazer said. To land at the jail, inmates have violated municipal ordinances – trespassing, driving while intoxicated or inflicting harm. Or perhaps they were arrested for stealing or prostitution. Many come from difficult circumstances, Leazer said. One survey of the female inmates found that 86 percent were or had been homeless, Leazer said. Sixty percent of inmates are mentally ill and 90 percent suffer drug or alcohol addiction, Leazer said.

“It can get rowdy,” inmate Latreace Anthony said. “When the police do a prostitute sting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, oh my goodness, it is so loud. Prostitutes from Independence Avenue – they do a prostitute sting and bring them all in.”

Time outdoors is limited. Most of the women’s hours are spent inside the dorm room or in the cafeteria. Some pick up jobs such as assisting with the laundry.

“I get up, do laundry, and just go back to my bunk,” Anthony said. “I really don’t talk to too many people. I just want to do what I got to do and get out of here.”

The garden

The volunteers called on the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture and other area master gardeners for guidance as they planned the garden. They picked flavorful vegetables and hardy, colorful flowers.

The garden follows the fence and fills in a corner of the women’s outdoor space. It was tilled near a patch of pavement and a basketball net. Heirloom tomatoes lean on the green vines. There are green peppers down one row. A variety of herbs – rosemary, lavender, thyme, sage, basil – nestle among towering zinnias and tall dill plants. The long green stem of a pumpkin plant curls along one side of the fence. In the back of the garden, along the far fence, stands a row of sunflowers.

Anthony, a new inmate to the facility, stepped into the garden area for the first time recently. She has six children, who are with their fathers while she’s in prison. She worries about what her teenage daughter is up to while she’s away. Anthony doesn’t plan on staying long. The institution’s roster lists her tentative release as Nov. 28.

“I have a set of twins at home that are probably crying themselves to sleep,” she later said. “It doesn’t pay to get in trouble.”

Anthony first walked into the garden with a bright orange knit hat on her head. She wore the dark green pants and shirt that are the uniform for the inmates. She carried a Bible.

Hoggard took her on a tour of the garden.

“There are a lot of great smells here,” she said. “Come with me.”

One by one, Hoggard would snap off a small stem from an herb and pass it to Anthony, encouraging her to take in its strong scent.

“What is this?” Anthony said, smelling one clump of small leaves.

“It’s thyme,” Hoggard said.

Hoggard offered Anthony a spring of lavender. She tucked the stem with its purple buds into her Bible.

Anthony gathered a cup of water and scissors and built a bouquet of zinnias.

“This is pretty nice,” she said. “I love nature. I used to be in the garden with my grandmother all the time, bonding and having fun with my grandmother.”

Anthony recalled her childhood, visiting her grandmother in Kansas City and later in Los Angeles, where the elder woman had a pear tree in her backyard.

“She used to have this little shed,” Anthony said. “I was able to climb on the shed and kind of get level to the pear tree and just eat my pears, close to the sky.”

Butterflies

Staff were skeptical of the volunteer gardeners at first. Corrections Officer Alfred Pouncil said he thought the female inmates wouldn’t take the garden seriously. But Pouncil and others came around, Hoggard said.

Now, Pouncil said he’s a complete convert. He plans to start a garden in his own backyard at home.

“I’m going to do that next year,” he said. “It’s going to be something new for me.”

Leazer, superintendent of corrections, said there has been a team approach to the garden.

“Both the officers and the inmates have really been inspired by it,” she said. “It’s just beyond my wildest dreams.”

The kitchen staff now want to get involved in the planning of next year’s garden, so they can use the vegetables in meals. One former inmate took a bouquet home with her when she was released. On one of the flowers sat a chrysalis that the woman planned to share with her children.

Tears come to Hoggard eyes when she’s asked what she gets out of the experience.

“It feeds my soul,” she said. “You take things on and you think you’re doing something for somebody else, and then you discover you’re getting so much out of it.”