[Music]



 My name is Rob Wright. I work for Open Door Group here at the Garden Gate Program in Canvas, PC. I'm the program coordinator, so I'm responsible for overseeing the operations.



 My name is Erica McCue. I work at Garden Gate. We're a program of Open Door Group. I am the activity coordinator, so I support participants who are interested in accessing the program and in supporting them through their experience here. We look like a farm, and we are a farm, but before that we're a mental health program. The only reason that we're here is because people choose to come here to learn and to work. So we're a 2.8-acre certified organic farm that supports people with mental health concerns in developing a variety of skills. Everybody comes for a different reason and gets something different out of it, but the work we do is collective, so we're all working on the same thing, taking something different away. Gardening is just inherently therapeutic. It's nice to have your hands in the dirt, to see something grow, to be part of something.



 We are in the process of kind of moving in to this super big space here, which is a huge improvement from our last space, which was what we operated out of for 20 years. We're able to have kitchen workshops that are more applicable to what somebody might be doing in the workforce, in a restaurant, as well as having just larger groups of people. We also have a private office, which is new for us. We previously didn't have that in our old space, which made it challenging to have some of the more personal conversations we have as part of a mental health program.



 The building is so much more than just a place for people to be. It's really about connection and about community and about the people that have been here and have made this necessary, but also for the people who are still here, who are continuing to make it necessary.



 I'm in recovery for drugs and alcohol, and I found that it brought me back on track. I build my confidence, my self-esteem.



 I overcame a couple fears actually, and phobias that I had, and being that at Garden Gate and the program and the staff, I was able to be myself.



 They had respected me. We were all treated equal, and they understood me. And so that was really important for me to be able to follow through and not be judged or second-guessed. When you've been down to dirt, gardening really is something that's very therapeutic. Every plant grows differently, just like every person grows differently. So they're so well-suited for each other, gardening and recovery, right? Because everyone gets to grow their own way. Some people will grow leaning towards the sun, and some people won't.



 They just are joined hand in hand as far as I'm concerned. You can really see what you put into gardening. I think that the tie-in of mental health and addiction recovery with food at the Garden Gate facility is really beautiful because I've struggled with mental health and with food, and I just think that they're so connected.



 You're never going to heal yourself if you're not thinking about what you're eating and how that affects you and how that affects your community, and it's not something you really are able to get over alone. It's not something people can struggle with, and people do struggle with food and mental health alone, but bringing people together to share food and share in the healing, I think is the most beautiful thing.



 We've always identified this space as not just a Garden Gate space. This is a community asset as we see it, and it's going to be able to be accessed by a number of groups. Whether that's a different mental health program that needs access to a kitchen, whether that's another food security agency that just needs a kitchen to prep some food for people, or whether that is one of the food hub participants, you know, a business down the road that just needs low-cost kitchen space to get themselves on the ground.



 We're all up and running. You know, we wouldn't have been able to do any of that in the past. The space is all licensed, it's all ready to go. That wouldn't have been an option for us in the past. [music]



 You put yourself into it and all of a sudden you can feed yourself, you can feed others, just with your time and your energy, right? So it's pretty beautiful. I really fell in love with it right away. I don't know what it was, what captured me, I don't know if it was just because it's nature, it's, you know, and the thought of giving back to the community, but being part of that. Our COVID plan is designed to treat it as a workplace, and we have the luxury of being outside a lot of the time. So we're able to be safe in an outdoor environment more than you are if you were in a building or in an office setting. So we've been lucky to be able to do that and grateful because this is, well for a lot of people that are accessing our services, this is the only thing they are doing. They're not able to get out to do other things because they're closed, or they're not comfortable getting out to do other things because of COVID. So it's kind of a lifeline, if you will.