"Most of my peers who have been incarcerated for some time enjoy catalogs. They pore over the merchandise fascinated by the changes and re-emergences of styles, the wealth of gadgetry, the vast array of toys and entertainments. I am not immune to this old-fashioned window-shopping. I love a good catalog, but I am drawn particularly to catalogs of books, tools and seeds.

I could easily give all my money to the book people. Choosing a modest selection, a top five for purchase from a book catalog once a year takes months of inner wrangling. But I can at least buy books or visit the library. And I can linger over tools in one of the trade classes. I can scratch these tickles.

Seeds, on the other hand, remain as fecund dreams. Strangely, I remember that as a child I was indifferent to the garden and churlish about the chores of weeding and turning the compost. Nonetheless at some point in my incarceration, I began to yearn to scrunch loamy soil in my hands. Some ancient peasant memory wakes in my heart and the only appropriate responses are canning, pickling, jamming, stirring the apple butter, forcing bulbs, hanging everlastings and braiding garlic, and watching for the first green fuzz of seedlings under lights. I ponder espaliered fruit trees, the best combinations of stock and graft, knot gardens of herbs and topiary. I savor the names and colors of heirloom and modern vegetables. I wonder who teaches the proper pronunciation of the Latin and will it ever roll off my tongue naturally instead of in staccato bursts.

Seed catalogs tantalize me. They are gorgeous. Some have the most beautiful illustrations–watercolors, line art, lino prints–some have glossy photos and are written by people who are in love with vegetation. The most vivid descriptions entice me to plant flowers and shrubs I’ve never heard of before; they challenge me to grow new-to-me fruits and vegetables. Having traveled some, I thought I may know something of the world’s variety. Seed catalogs have shown me my ignorance.

One of my young students asked me if I regret never having children. I could only respond that I regret never having had a garden.

One day, of course, I shall have a garden. And, in the meantime, I have seed catalogs and books on gardens and gardening.

Most recently, I have indulged fantasies about therapeutic gardens. From the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia to the civil wars of Africa to the ethnic cleansing of Serbia and Bosnia to the institutions of the United States, the garden is becoming a source of healing and restoration. The empirical science is young, but the evidence appears overwhelming: the process of growing and maintaining a garden does a person, does a relationship, does a community good. When an inner city block plants and tends shrubs and flowers together, the neighborhood is revitalized; when the mentally ill transplant seedlings they become more stable and focused; when felons grow vegetables they evolve into productive citizens.

The therapy garden theorists accredit this universally beneficial effect of the garden on human beings to the witnessing of nature’s regenerative powers. No matter how war-torn and ravaged, come spring, shoots emerge. Ever hopeful, the earth heals and renews.

But I think the growing in a garden is so much more than resilient weeds pushing through concrete. Gardening takes time and patience and hard work. It also requires a vision–a dream of possibility. A gardener must imagine what could, or might grow. For with gardening you put all you know at this moment into the moment and then must leave the rest up to the garden. For with gardening there are no guarantees. The seeds will germinate or not; the harvest fall short or overwhelm; weather, insects, mistakes in gardening judgment, animals, birds can all devastate a garden. Each year’s garden is unique with its own idiosyncrasies. And every gardener will know failure but also will know the lovely surprises, those unexpected unmerited successes. Every garden has its lessons in humility and generosity.

Perhaps it is this cycle that heals the people who work the garden’s soil. Beyond the effort, beyond the mysteries of life both fragile and vigorous, beyond the significance of lowly worms, beetles and bees, beyond the extravagant variety of tubers, vines, legumes, roots and fruits, the garden calls up vision and hope in the depths of winter. Then through rudimentary skill and consistent labor, the garden blooms into harvest. And there it is: the impossible has occurred. In a single year, an ethereal dream has become a practical, concrete, and tangible reality. No matter the disappointments and disasters, the garden satisfies.

In the meantime, I read every word of my seed catalogs and dream. In those dreams, I scatter seeds and they grow even in the most unlikely places." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, January 17, 2008)

Elizabeth Haysom is incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, in Troy, Virginia (ten miles east of Charlottesville). Her columns appear monthly under the general title, Glimpses from Inside. Here is an index to these columns.