Can gardening help reform habitual drug abusers?
Celebrity gardener Monty Don has taken a group of ex-offenders under his wing, and two years into this pioneering project, is starting to see rewards. On a peaceful six-acre plot in Herefordshire a group of people are tilling the soil, planting crops and tending the sheep and chickens. It has been a good harvest on the smallholding, bearing marrows, tomatoes, salad leaves – although rabbits have massacred the brassica. You cannot cheat nature. You can’t lie to a pig that needs feeding or a plant that’s got to be grown Monty Don So far, so cosy, rural England. But before this crop of horticulturists were here their harvest was heroin and other drugs, reaped from the proceeds of stolen goods. They say gardening is good for the soul. For Monty Don, who dreamed up the scheme to help the ex-offenders, the mystical and practical benefits of it are beyond doubt. “I have a complete faith in the healing power of the land,” he says. “They tease me about it, ‘Monty and his mystical view of the la
