It’s a Tuesday morning and Julian, 17, is at his favorite class: horticulture. Inside a greenhouse near Burlington County’s Smithville Mansion, he carefully transplants rosemary from a small container into a larger decorative pot.
“This is another one of those things that’s teaching me patience,” says Julian, who, until two months ago, had never sowed an herb, or any plant, in his life. “I’ve got to be careful or I’ll rip the roots.”
Julian is a resident within the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission (JJC) — the agency responsible for the care, custody, and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. With JJC, he’s getting his first taste of gardening. And he likes it, a lot.
Just outside, 17-year-old Raquan is transforming terra cotta pots into works of art, using red and yellow spray paint. He wears a blue sweater and jeans, the JJC uniform, with a black headband that keeps his dreadlocks from the line of fire.
His horticulture teacher, Keith Faust, compliments Raquan on the pots’ textured pattern.
It’s mid-February, but Faust, sporting a red T-shirt and shorts, has been hands-deep in summer all winter-long, tending tomato plants with his students. Soon, they’ll head to the Philadelphia Flower Show. This year marks JJC’s 13th year competing in the show, a rare opportunity for a group of juvenile offenders. While excited, most struggle to imagine what the show is.
“A lot of these kids are from the inner city, where they didn’t even have a balcony, let alone a yard,” says Faust. “I can explain to them what it’s like to walk into this football-field-size setting that bombards you with plants, but you can’t really understand unless you go.”
