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Rust Belt 2010
Detroit, Michigan
USA
July 25, 2010
The Gateway Community Garden has been built and cultivated by Michigan prison inmates finishing their sentences at the Gateway halfway house on East Jefferson Avenue-a main artery in Detroit. They have created a small but vibrant inner-city garden. Using a vacant lot and recycled debris from a demolished house nearby, a dozen or more inmates are growing corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, lettuce and squash.
The men give away the fruits and vegetables to needy people and appreciate purposeful work to fill their final days of incarceration. Michigan prison inmate Harley Hubble, 50 is one of the principle players in making the garden a reality. He spent three of his 10 year sentence studying horticulture. He learned about crops, soil management, landscape design and greenhouses.
In this image three inmates hand over freshly picked cucumbers to a neighbor.
Urban gardening has taken Detroit by storm with so many vacant lots available after thousands of homes have been foreclosed, abandoned and demolished many residents and neighborhoods have turned those plots in to productive land.
