Healing through horticulture
Urban gardening helps Milwaukee veterans with PTSD cope through organic therapy
Sweat beaded on Alphonso Dunaway’s smiling face as he leaned down to check the fruit of his labor. “I’ve got going on here some bell peppers, I’ve got some banana peppers, one cherry tomato, a regular tomato plant, some purple cabbage,” Dunaway said Saturday morning.
Then he noticed a fellow worker in his garden. “Look — there’s a bee doing its job; it’s pollinating.”
Dunaway’s picnic table-sized garden plot is small, but it’s his own little piece of heaven. It gives him peace, a sense of satisfaction watching something grow from his hard work and a bit of salvation ripening on his vines.
The Army veteran was diagnosed with PTSD and since April has lived at VETS Place Central, a transitional housing location for homeless and disabled veterans on West Wells Street.
“Touching soil is an antidepressant. It makes you feel good and puts a smile on your face. You’re seeing something change from a seed, which is amazing. Coming from the military we were so used to the destructive model, and with urban farming you switch from destruction to creation.” Brian Sales, leader of the Milwaukee chapter of Green Veterans
This summer he’s participating with other vets coping with depression, anxiety, PTSD and other ailments in an organic therapy program operated by Green Veterans in conjunction with Groundwork Milwaukee and the Center for Veterans Issues.
Healing by horticulture is not a new concept. It doesn’t work for everyone, but Green Veterans, which recently opened a chapter in Milwaukee, is leveraging urban gardening and agriculture as an alternative therapy for people with PTSD and other trauma-related experiences, said Brian Sales, leader of the Milwaukee chapter of Green Veterans.
Sales served two tours in Iraq and one in Kosovo in the Army. When he left the military, he was hired as a manager at a tire company but realized that sitting at a desk handling paperwork was not what he wanted to do. He missed the camaraderie of the military, the close support from battle buddies and the feeling that what he did mattered.
He began to have trouble sleeping, experiencing mood swings and difficulty in keeping relationships. He sometimes felt isolated and self-medicated, initially in denial that anything was wrong.
Then Sales began working with dirt. “Since I started my career path in sustainability a year ago, I stopped taking the medications the VA said I’d have to take for the rest of my life,” said Sales.
“Touching soil is an antidepressant. It makes you feel good and puts a smile on your face. You’re seeing something change from a seed, which is amazing. Coming from the military we were so used to the destructive model, and with urban farming you switch from destruction to creation.”
Sales co-founded Green Veterans in Florida with Edel Travieso in 2013 when they were classmates pursuing degrees in renewable energy management. Sales came to Milwaukee in 2016 to meet Will Allen, tour his now-defunct Growing Power urban agriculture nonprofit and learn about composting, aquaponics, viticulture, mushroom inoculation, animal husbandry and beekeeping.
Sales moved to Milwaukee in May 2017 to work for Allen, but the organization folded in November. Sales stayed here and now organizes Green Veterans agriculture projects while chapters in Florida, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico offer programs for affordable housing, renewable energy, ecotourism and food production. Chapters are expected to open soon in Illinois and Virginia, said Travieso.
William Sims, a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient, started the organic therapy project 15 years ago in a secluded area behind VETS Place Central in Milwaukee. His mother encouraged him to take up gardening because she could see he was in distress; now he helps other veterans.
“I think gardening brings a solution to some of their problems, which is staying busy, learning something new and eating healthy,” said Sims, who wore his Combat Infantry Badge pinned to his hat.
All of the food harvested from the garden will be eaten by residents at VETS Place Central.
Most of the 14 veterans who volunteered to participate in the organic therapy program are residents of VETS Place Central. Veterans range in age from Vietnam to post-9/11 eras. Each chose whatever he wanted to plant in his garden: kale, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, cabbage, collard greens, okra, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers and squash.
Bernie Grosso, who served in the Marines in the 1970s, picked yellow pear and Roma tomatoes as well as several varieties of peppers — yellow, jalapeño, cayenne and banana — for his garden. Grosso has lived at VETS Place Central for 10 months and cooks for his fellow veterans a couple days a week.
Last week he picked fresh basil from the garden for a batch of spaghetti sauce he whipped up for dinner.
“It tasted so much better than something from a farm in California,” said Grosso, whose 9-year-old grandson helps him with his garden.
Grosso is looking forward to a canning class offered this fall to learn how to preserve some of his tomatoes for chili and spaghetti sauce. He also took part in a beekeeping class held the day before.
Saturday morning, Sales pulled open a small beehive next to a storage shed and showed some of the veterans and youths from Groundwork Milwaukee the honeycomb under construction. The veterans noticed how the garden began flourishing after the bees took up residence four weeks earlier.
Stefan Guiden, a Marine who served in Iraq and Haiti, didn’t plant a garden but became intrigued when he heard about the bees. He wants to eventually become a beekeeper and is taking the classes to learn the basics of bee health.
“I want to learn how to take care of the hive and spread the knowledge because bees are cool,” said Guiden, who lives at VETS Place Central. “It’s nice having something to focus on. You can see a difference between the vets doing this and the vets who aren’t.”
The veterans work in the garden on Saturday mornings and come out each dusk to water their plants. They also often come to the garden just to sit in silence, “watching the butterflies and bees. It’s our own little sanctuary,” said Grosso.