"A floral approach to justice" (TheStar.com)

one of Canada's most unusual gardens – designed, planted and nurtured by young offenders.

Spanning two hectares next to a former barley mill in downtown Bowmanville, the property was looking a bit ragged until two years ago, when David Chisling, a supply teacher and non-denominational minister, talked the local Rotary Club into allowing him to use the site for the project.

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it is part of a growing "horticultural therapy" movement that uses plants and gardening to improve people's physical and emotional well-being.

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"As I was working in the garden, I found myself just drifting away from what I didn't like in the world and I discovered an outlet for all my anger," he said. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, his identity can't be disclosed.

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While participants come from the courts, some would like to see the project broadened into a crime prevention program for at-risk youth.

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The beauty of gardening, aside from the end product, is that it allows people to think outside themselves and meets some basic human needs, said Nancy Lee-Colibaba, the horticultural therapy co-ordinator at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington.

"A person instinctively needs to nurture and they also need to be creative. That's not saying they need to be an artist or have creative writing skills, but they need to express themselves one way or another. Gardening and working with plants provides both of that," she said.

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For Chisling, an avid gardener

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Chisling approached the Rotarians, who'd purchased the park decades earlier as a gift to the town. Club members agreed to let him use the land and donated $10,000 to the project, with a promise of $30,000 in future years. George Vice, a 92-year-old Bowmanville resident, also donated $10,000 in memory of a man who'd given him a job at 14.

Chisling persuaded the federal justice department to contribute $28,000 from its youth justice fund. "That was not easy, believe me," he said.

The money was used to buy plants, truckloads of soil, boulders, interlocking bricks, work clothes, gas for a used truck, lunches for the kids and seven white birch trees to honour Rotary Club members who used their own savings 50 years ago to purchase the land. When work got underway in 2007, the site was "a pile of muck," said Chisling.

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