Every Tuesday morning from May through October, a special garden at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton is filled with the smell of freshly turned soil and the sound of students tending to plants they cannot see.
For more than 20 years, Arapahoe County master gardeners, trained by Colorado State University, have helped students here learn to use their other senses to cultivate the wide variety of plants growing there.
It’s all part of the center’s Independence Training Program, a six to nine-month course for adults from across the country to learn the skills needed to navigate the world, both in their personal lives and in the workforce, as an unsighted person.
“One of the barriers to blind people living successful lives are the low expectations that society has for us and that we consequently have for ourselves,” Colorado Center for the Blind public relations specialist Dan Burke said in a release from CSU about the gardening program. “Our training is based on what we, as blind people, know is truly possible. We set expectations of our students that are much higher than those at traditional centers.”
Alongside braille, technology, travel and home management, gardening is one of the many enrichment activities offered by the program.
“Knowing that they not only grow this food, but then they harvest it, bring it back to the kitchen and share it with the other students is a highlight for me,” said Master Gardener Pat Giarritano, who works with students as a volunteer.
In the garden, students can navigate the space like a clock face, finding the herbs, for example, between 11 and 1 o’clock. For student Sharon Toaiva, the program marked her first experience planting and caring for vegetables.
“I always thought you had to plant things deep, and you don’t,” she said. Toaiva proudly harvested spinach and cilantro for a graduation meal she planned to prepare for 60 fellow students, staff and guests as part of her program training.
The experience is designed to leave her and other students with confidence they might not have had before.
“Every part of this program adds something that people think they could never do, and we show them that they can,” said home management instructor and former Center for the Blind student, Tiffany Moon. “Gardening, from most people’s perspective, is a very visual thing, but we show that you can do it in a tactile way.”
Student Jeremy Smith, a therapist by trade, shares Moon’s enthusiasm. “It’s so gratifying to walk out your back door, and there’s lunch,” said Smith. “There’s a real sense of satisfaction and gratification in doing that.”
The Colorado Center for the Blind garden thrives because of the partnership between Master Gardener volunteers and students. “We’re a nonprofit, and it would take a lot of staff time to coordinate a garden, so we wouldn’t be able to do this at this level without the Master Gardeners,” Burke said.
For the master gardeners, it’s a classroom unlike any other: one that also teaches them something new.
“I’m amazed at their individual stories and the journey they have traveled,” said master gardener Zandy Wennerstrom. “We are able to plant little seeds of experience and encouragement with each person. You never know how those seeds will add to their life journey. And I have become much more respectful and comfortable with people who have unique life challenges.”
For the students, it’s also proof that independence can grow from a single seed.
“I learned a lot more from the master gardeners about how to know what things are, how to know what’s ripe, that you can taste the leaves of the different herbs – I never knew you could do that,” said student Chris Parsons. “I love that you can come out here and eat right off the plant. I grew up doing that.”
