Bronwyn Adams-Hooper

RYMAN HEALTHCARE GARDENER OF THE YEAR HAS BEEN RECOGNISED FOR HER WORK VOLUNTEERING AS A GARDEN MENTOR IN THE YOUTH UNIT AT CHRISTCHURCH MEN’S PRISON

On the same day I called Howard League volunteer Bronwyn Adams-Hooper to tell her she has won our annual Ryman Healthcare Gardener of the Year competition – having been nominated for her work running a horticulture programme for 18- to 21-year-olds incarcerated in the youth unit at Christchurch Men’s Prison – she also learned that the unit could soon cease to exist. A proposal had been made to repurpose it as a Covid-19 isolation ward, which would mean the inhabitants could be moved elsewhere – possibly into adult prisons, and likely away from their family support.

So the first thing she asked was if she could share the news with the eight young men in the garden crew straight away. Normally our winners keep mum until the result is announced in the magazine, but – as Bronwyn knew – if the offenders were moved into another facility, she would have no way to reach them to let them know the result.

“So the next day I went in,” she told me later, “and we stood around in a circle and we put our hands on a rake. And I made them promise that we wouldn’t be snitches, in good prison fashion. And then I told them that I had won but it was still a secret. There was such excitement, they were bouncing around. I think it will be a highlight for them for a long time.

“Just the idea of winning something,” she explains. “These guys haven’t won many things in life. Usually everything is stacked against them. Life kicks them a lot. They never win.”

They were excited enough to hear she was a finalist, she told me; and thought it was “so cool” when she sought and received permission to take in the November issue so they could see the story of the prison garden in print.

“They took real ownership of being nominated,” Bronwyn says. “I noticed that they were spending more time in the garden and keeping it better after that news.”

The winner of Ryman Healthcare Gardener of the Year is decided by public vote, and so Bronwyn asked around her local community if anyone could spare the postal voting form from the magazine to take in for the prisoners on the gardener crew so they could cast a ballot too. “And that was awesome. When you are in there, you feel so separate from the rest of the world. So they loved the fact they could play a real part in something like this.”

Corrections staff have already spoken to Bronwyn about volunteering in another garden within prison system, in the event the youth unit ceases to exist. She’s not yet sure where or how she’ll direct her horticultural energy and skills to try and help young offenders, but she knows that she will – having seen first hand the difference it can make. The young men who have passed through the prison garden programme, in the three years that Bronwyn has run it, have gone on to land employment using the horticultural skills that they have acquired, but – and perhaps more importantly – they have seen themselves as people with potential, perhaps for the first time.

“I know I want to stay involved in something like this,” Bronwyn says. “I think it was only when I heard it might be taken away, that I realised how important it was to me.”

Just after she found out that the garden programme might be disbanded, Bronwyn says, she was driving in with a load of compost to top off the beds. “And for a minute I thought, ‘Well, there’s no point in putting compost on,’” she says. “I nearly turned around and drove home. But then I thought, for the boys, I have to look forward. So I went in. And last time I went in, we planted seeds. I told them that when you are planting seeds, you’ve got something to look forward to. I wanted them to know there is always hope.”

This year’s Resene’s Most Colourful Character prize was awarded to Pearl Lindsay in Waitara for her work growing food in the community gardens at Wise Charitable Trust, which is passed on to the local food bank.

“Being in the garden crew means they learn new skills. They have a chance to try and succeed. Something is expected of them. It changes them.”