Harvesting Support 

Published October 30th, 2024 at 12:00 am

Michelle Bishop-Couch has fond memories of a day in 2010 she spent teaching the art of herb cultivation to an elderly woman with dementia. 

“She didn’t talk much. For a couple of months she just didn’t really say anything,” she says. “We had her out in the greenhouse and we were working with oregano learning about what you can do with it — smell, taste, texture — and all of a sudden this woman’s eyes lit up. There was someone there, you know? And she said, ‘Oh, I know oregano! My mom used to cook with it.”

Bishop-Couch says smelling the herb’s familiar aroma and hearing its name unlocked a memory, and it was beautiful. The woman was able to share a specific story about cooking in her kitchen with her mom and her siblings, and it was all because of her interaction with a plant.

Bishop Couch is executive director and CEO of Cornucopia Adult Day Services, a community-based day facility for adults with different abilities that specializes in horticultural therapy. Cornucopia is currently on a mission to raise money to open a plant shop where their clients will sell plants they grew and cultivated themselves, with the proceeds directly funding their greenhouse facility.

Cornucopia’s day facility at 2002 Bridge SW provides care to people 18 years and older with different abilities and conditions that don’t allow their families to leave them alone during the day. They have been in the South Valley since 1979 and incorporated as a nonprofit in 1984, so Bishop-Couch says the community really knows and supports them. A second location right around the corner is designed exclusively for seniors. 

Cornucopia has programs like their Family Living Program where caregivers receive a stipend for providing live-in care to their clients. Bishop-Couch equates Family Living to “foster care for adults with an intellectual disability.” A similar program called Supported Living provides care to clients who live in groups, kind of like roommates.

“We don’t like to call it a group home anymore,” she says. “We have three homes. One on the Westside, one in the South Valley, and then our third one Singing Arrow Community up by Tramway and Central behind Sprouts. It’s a really nice little home. And so the individuals live there, they pay rent, and then we provide staff for them 24/7.”

Clients who participate in Cornucopia’s horticultural therapy program can volunteer to work in a 60 by 30 fully-licensed professional greenhouse built with money Bishop-Couch raised herself without taking out loans. As a nonprofit, Cornucopia relies on grants and donations to keep the greenhouse running, and currently Cornucopia is trying to raise $10,000 by Nov. 9 to support their Plant Shop Initiative. Bishop-Couch says if the initiative is successful, they will open a shop where plants like microgreens and veggies and cultivated by Cornucopia will be sold to the public.

“We’re asking the community to help us create a space where every plant purchase contributes to a greater cause,” Bishop-Couch says. “This plant shop will not only be a place for plant lovers but will also fund therapeutic programs that improve lives.”

Cornucopia’s hope is that through the Plant Shop Initiative, they will be able to have a source of sustainable revenue to keep their horticultural therapy programs running while involving their clients in the South Valley’s rich gardening community. Bishop-Couch says Cornucopia is proud of its roots in the South Valley where some of the hardest working people she knows live. Literally speaking, the seeds that Cornucopia clients have planted will grow into seedlings whose roots will eventually end up in South Valley soil. In the Spring, clients working in the greenhouse put together their salsa kits. 

“You’ve got your cilantro, you’ve got your habaneros, you’ve got your tomatoes, and we give you the kit,” she says. “You can go home, plant it, grow your own. We have all kinds of different tomato plants that we can sell, squash, cucumbers, we’ve got it.”

Working in the Cornucopia greenhouse helps people with different abilities develop job skills, but it also gives a break to caregivers, especially since many of the people who work in the gardens receive care at home. Bishop-Couch says that caregivers must remember to take care of themselves, too.

“It not only helps the individuals we serve but it helps their families as well because the families still have to work, they have to put food on their tables,” Bishop-Couch says. “And so for us being open and being trained and able to care for their individual allows them to go to work. Even if they don’t work, everybody needs a break.”

She says clients learn how to work in a group or independently and learn skills that they can take and get a job if they choose. Bishop-Couch says that the program’s benefits aren’t derived simply from growing plants, but through the process of learning how to collaborate with another person.

“One will get the pot filled with soil and then another will plant the seeds, then we water it and nurture them and take care of it,” she says.

Horticultural therapy, also known as garden therapy, is not a new field. The American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA) was established in 1973. According to the AHTA, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the first to document the positive effect working in gardens had on individuals with mental health conditions and the field gained credibility in the 1940s and 1950s when the practice was used to rehabilitate war veterans. 

Bishop-Couch says that Cornucopia’s horticultural therapy programs benefit everyone involved in the program — clients, caregivers, their families, and the South Valley Community as a whole — in different ways. She says that particularly salient memory, her own experience working with a client with dementia, is just one example.

“The families have lost their loved one, but their loved one’s still here, they’re just not mentally capable of processing in the moment,” she says. “But by unlocking that memory, it was like that was success, and that is what that program is meant to do.”

Bishop-Couch says Cornucopia’s big fundraising event right now is their yearly matanza. A $20 donation gets attendees a raffle ticket for a door prize, traditional carne adovada and chicharones slow cooked  the day before, rice, beans and biscochitos. The Nov. 9 event also features a car show, silent auction, several vendors, and silk screen T-shirts made by Cornucopia clients. 

Supporters of Cornucopia’s Indiegogo campaign will have the chance to get exclusive perks, including plant bundles, personalized plant care consultations and invitations to in-store events. Their greenhouse is always looking for nonmonetary donations like soil, tools, gloves or seeds.

Bishop-Couch says Cornucopia’s calling is to get their clients to engage as much as possible with the South Valley neighborhood where they do their gardening, because something like working as a volunteer, taking a trip to the local library, or visiting a nearby museum is what really improves people’s lives.

“That’s our goal,” she says. “For them to be included in the community they’re a part of.”