Prison Programs

The MMGA’s Prison Horticulture Program provides an opportunity to dedicated Master Gardeners to make a difference in the lives of incarcerated individuals. We partner with the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) in providing successful horticulture programs in four DOC prisons.

The program provides training and development to incarcerated individuals while they are in prison to ready them for work in the green industry upon release.

What we provide:

• Learning by doing

• Experimenting with garden and landscape design

• Gardening to give back to the community

• Training in essential plant science

• Facilitating group collaboration

• Understanding plant schedules, seed starting, cover crops, need for hardening off, harvesting and storage, and crop rotation, and much more

Photos of the NECC Gardens by MG Tony Bonnano