Diane Fleet: Greenhouse17 serves Central Kentucky; so we serve Lexington and the
16 surrounding counties. Our primary focus is working with families who are experiencing intimate
partner violence, working with families with whatever it is that they need that's a barrier
to help them move from some sort of crisis to self-sufficiency.
Diane Follingstad: We knew that they had moved from the inner city. But, they now are
in the area where there's horse farms. They have 40 acres. And, we didn't know that
Diane Fleet, the associate director, was starting to think about how can we use this land?
How can we make it work for us as a shelter?
Can they really bring in farm activities into a shelter, where the goal is to help battered
women basically recover, stabilize, and then move on with their lives. Is that the same thing?
Is it different? Can it be integrated? So, they were looking for someone to come out
and talk to the workers there, and see how they viewed it. So, that's how
Claire Renzetti and I got involved.
Diane Fleet: You've got to have a roof over people's head, and you got to have food in
their tummies, and you've got to have safety. I get that. But, what is it you can do already
with the resources you have to amplify the services that women really need?
So I think at that point people started connect staff started connecting the dots between
what I'm doing, and I'm talking about stress, anxiety,
physical ailments due to a traumatic experience; and oh, we have this farm and
we have nature and we have these pieces. So it began to build.
And, now I think it's really changed our programing in entirety. Women are involved, clients take
leadership roles. They make decisions about how the programing goes, and what the product
should be called, and what are we going to produce. So we started seeing more confidence
being built in women and making decisions around their lives when they were allowed
access to do those things.
Claire Renzetti I was really fascinated by the impact that this was having on women who
have experienced horrible things in their lives. And their children.
And the fact that they were somehow recovering more quickly. And particularly for women who have
substance use problems, it seemed that this was really helping them not only recover from
the intimate partner violence, but also recover from their substance use problems.
Diane Follingstad: In order to get women that are willing to commit to a six-week program
of the farming, to be able to say, if you go through six weeks of this, are you somehow
reaping some benefits that women who go through the other aspects of the shelter are not?
You typically need to provide some kind of incentive to get that consistency.
Claire Renzetti: And so we looked for a good fit in terms of funding mechanisms.
And the Office on Violence Against Women had a funding mechanisms, and we applied, and they
agreed with us that it was a good fit. In fact, they gave us more money than we asked
for, which is unheard of. They recognized the value of the project.
Claire Renzetti: As we've learned more about therapeutic horticulture, we've learned that
you can do this with container gardens. You can use rooftop gardens; you can use a
front lawn. Any community garden. So, this has a tremendous potential impact for
rural communities. But it also applies to suburban and urban communities as well, because
you can do therapeutic horticulture in pretty much any setting.
Diane Fleet: Their joy, their inspiration, their encouragement of what we're doing has
been extremely beneficial. Because, you know, we're not sure if what we're doing makes sense.
And to have somebody, you know, like Claire and Diane go, oh no, this makes perfect sense.
We're seeing this work done with veterans returning home. We're seeing this work done
in, you know, medical facilities. We're seeing this work done in prisons. Like, this makes
sense that people who've experienced long-term trauma can benefit from this work.
We talk anecdotally about what happens out at Greenhouse17, but I think to have research
behind it, really gives us some leverage as we're competing for dollars.
I'd like to figure out how to expand Farm Concept to our 16 surrounding counties.
Diane Follingstad: Our mission is research. If you have been a victim of violence as a women,
we would like to know the best ways to help you get better, to help you heal.
This certainly fits with that kind of research. But we're also into prevention.
And, if you think about it, these shelters
are hoping to prevent future violence for the women. And, if this therapeutic horticulture
experience for them, helps them change, grow, heal, do better with whatever resources that
they have; then it definitely meets that mission.
Claire Renzetti: That's not just the mission of the center. That's the mission of the University of Kentucky.
To serve the Commonwealth and beyond.
And so, we're just doing what the university does.