Muriel Wright Youth Detention Center

The Muriel Wright Youth Detention Center project involves two separate but connecting activities:

First, Master Gardeners will be teaching a 45-minute to 1 hour class in basic gardening skills once a week to a group of girls aged 13-18 or boys aged 13-15 ½. These weekly classes will be taught in cooperation with the “regular” teachers who are contracted by Santa Clara County Education Department.

Entrance sign at Muriel Wright Youth Dentention Center | Collection of the Master Gardeners who work at the center.

Second, Master Gardeners will be designing and implementing the construction of a garden between two dormitory wings on the Wright Ranch property. The garden will serve as a laboratory for gardening classes and will be maintained by the students under supervision of Master Gardeners and probation officers assigned to the groups. The garden will be approximately 500+ square feet and will contain drought-resistant ornamentals, seasonal vegetables, fruit trees, and annual flowers for a cutting garden. The property is on the hillside overlooking South San Jose and is a very good area to begin a teaching garden, highlighting sustainability.

Views of the begining garden at Muriel Wright Youth Dentention Center

Teenagers are truly an underserved community, perhaps by their own choice. These teenagers at Wright Center, all serving prison terms for felonies and unable to be released to their parents for a variety of reasons and are in the process of trying to turn their life around so that they won’t serve subsequent prison terms. Although they are a bit of a “captive audience”, we will try with our weekly classes to show them the fun, skills, and joy of gardening. We hope that participating in the classes and working in the garden may give at least some of these teens new tools to manage their life, both recreationally and perhaps even as a career.