LKOC Plant Sale To Aid WCCC

It’s called a plant sale, but Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle’s annual fundraiser next weekend is just the tip of the green iceberg.

Sale proceeds from the club’s huge inventory of healthy plants will go directly to the Women’s Community Correctional Center to support the cultivation of hydro-ponic lettuce, herbs and vegetables for the prison kitchen.

“Thirty women have been in this Learning to Grow program over the past four years,” said LKOC member Claudia Webster. “A team of nine volunteer teachers and a volunteer hydroponics consultant meet with the women six hours a week in the (prison) garden to teach various methods of backyard vegetable and plant gardening to the very receptive students at WCCC.”

The inmate crew in turn puts in time five days a week to maintain the crops as they learn cooperation, self-valuing, responsibility and many more skills and lessons to help them on the outside later on. These inspired horticulturists are the same ones who grow the plants for the plant sale.

The sale will be open from 8 to 11 a.m. April 13 at Kailua Elementary School. The public is invited to “buy in” to the Learning to Grow project with a little green from their wallets.

For more information on the sale and the prison program, call LKOC/WCCC liaison Margaret Brezel at 263-4040 or email her at mlbrezel@jps.net.