Garden Time

Garden Time’s mission is to create garden programs for incarcerated men and women at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution and elsewhere. Through the processes of gardening, the organization fosters education, inspiration and empowerment; teaches inmates to grow food for economic and personal self-reliance; and identifies and connects with existing opportunities that enable and encourage permanent re-entry into society.

Garden Time planted their first garden at the ACI in 2010 and incorporated as a 501c3 non-profit in 2013. Currently there are Garden Time programs at three facilities at the ACI: the Men’s Maximum Security Facility, the Women’s Minimum Security Facility, both with large vegetable, flower and herb gardens, and more recently the Men’s Medium Security Facility which hosts a large herb garden. Garden Time founders designed the program, wrote the curriculum, and work in the gardens weekly with the inmates. Garden Time participants grow food for the kitchen in their facility, supplying fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the growing season and dried herbs for the winter.