AURORA — Sometimes it takes a village — and a garden — to heal a girl. At both have been present this spring.
The nation’s largest residential treatment center and school for girls with emotional or social difficulties, Excelsior had a garden, but lacked the infrastructure for it to really get off the ground.
“Nurturing can be a challenge for our girls because they weren’t nurtured,” said Joan Gabrielson, executive director for 39 of Excelsior’s 40 years. “They might overwater plants, thinking ‘the more I give, the better.’ Or they’d walk away.”
Enter volunteer landscape professionals from the ; neighborhood gardeners; the and other charitable donors. They pitched in to create an area on the 33-acre campus where troubled girls could grow vegetables.
On Earth Day, the volunteers gathered at Excelsior with woman-power, heavy equipment and a landscape plan. They built 14 raised beds with tidy breeze pathways between them; added an irrigation system; and got everything ready for planting.
Last week, Sarah Marcogliese, 33, helped Sharon, 14, and Jovanna, 16, put tomatoes and peppers in. The three have much in common: Each knows what it’s like is to be an at-risk girl.
“I was molested by a doctor when I was 8,” said Marcogliese. “I lived on my own since I was 15. I’ve been raped. I slept in parks more times than I care to admit.”
When Marcogliese was growing up, she was told that she’d be “a stripper, a hooker, a junkie, or worse.” Instead, Marcogliese now owns Native Earth Landscape, a firm she founded 10 years ago. She’s married, the mother of two.
Gardening, she said, turned her life around. She reversed her downward spiral when she landed a job in a San Francisco nursery. Now she specializes in high-end garden maintenance and permaculture.
“I don’t want to be a victim,” she said. “I don’t want to be judged or pitied. I want to show these girls that they can grow up and make their own decisions, even though some adults in their past didn’t make the best decisions for them.
“Gardening is therapeutic. It brings peace to so many people. Gardens connect us to something bigger than ourselves. Plants look great when you love them.”
Last week, Sharon, Jovanna and other Excelsior residents were busy getting their hands dirty.
“The garden relates to life because life gets so deep and hard and rough,” Sharon said. “But there’s also a point when you rise above it. I see that in plants: They are underground in the cold and the dark, but they do grow up and blossom.”
Removed from her drug-abusing and violent biological parents at age 6, Sharon was adopted by a new family at age 8. She soon will finish a year at Excelsior.
“I got my head figured out here,” Sharon said. “Definitely, when I get older and have a family of my own, I will have a garden outside my house.”
Jovanna’s history includes repeatedly running away from home and cutting herself. “I was sexually assaulted. I never talked about it. I was very stubborn and stuck,” she said.
Her therapist recommended gardening. “To me, gardening is like taking care of little babies,” she said. “I think gardening has helped me with my patience.”
The third anniversary of her assault looms. “Usually, it’s a really bad day for me, but I planned out what I’m going to do. I’m going to a park. I hate parks because (my assault) happened in a park. I lost my faith, so I’m going to church that day to get my belief back. And I’m going to go feed the homeless. I like giving back.”
Jovanna also likes vegetables. She plans to have her own garden, where she’ll grow tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and “even though I hate onions, I’m going to grow them for other people who like them.”
The as it’s called, has a big job to do for the 161 live-in and 30 nonresident students, ages 11 to 18, who attend Excelsior.
“Our girls have low self-esteem, often with a history of self-harm,” said Excelsior development director Kathy Graveley. “These kids have lived on the streets. They’ve been raped. They’ve seen murders. Most have not been in any organized school. Many were abandoned. They’ve failed everyplace else.”
The average Excelsior student has tried 12 previous treatment facilities. One 16-year-old had lived in 75 different places. But “In the garden, the girls feel good about themselves, and then the healing can begin,” Graveley said.
The project itself germinated from a grapevine of women involved in landscape and garden work. Over cups of coffee, Rose Seeman chatted with friend Becky Garber about Excelsior’s garden and its challenges. Garber, the landscaper’s association’s communications director, thought it a perfect fit for the group’s participation in the Professional Landcare Network’s National Day of Service.
“Gardening keeps me sane,” Seeman said. “Gardening is long-term and teaches these girls to see things through. Sometimes it’s hard weeding and not chasing butterflies.”
As the women helped the girls tuck in bedding plants, the new garden was already making its presence known. An elderly gentleman in a woven palm hat stopped by to donate onion sets.
Fresh vegetables and fruits from the Girl Sprouts Garden will turn up in the Excelsior dining hall. The school’s culinary arts program will put the fresh produce to use, too, in their kitchens. Excelsior will also donate the garden’s bounty to local food banks.
Even as they got dirty, the gardeners at Excelsior came clean. Marcogliese said that after she shared her story of struggle with her landscaping peers, several women confided similar tales.
“We all wanted these girls to feel empowered and know they can find jobs in the landscaping industry. They don’t have to just grow flowers: They can drive a Bobcat. More and more women own landscape companies,” Marcogliese said.
Male or female, landscape firm owners enthusiastically backed the project, Garber added. “As one of the them said, ‘Teach a girl how to grow her own food, and that truly empowers her.’ “
Colleen Smith is the author of “Glass Halo,” a novel set, in part, in Denver gardens.
