After she completes a few other steps, Jaclyn West has big ideas she wants to implement that are partly inspired by her experience during the past three months.

West is one of the Class D felons serving time at the Barren County Detention Center who volunteered and was chosen to participate in Project Breaking Ground, which produced a vegetable, herb and flower garden on the grounds of the jail.

The endeavor was a partnership of Western Kentucky University faculty and students, the jail staff and inmates, and others in the community, and on Thursday, and an open-house-style celebration of how much had been accomplished in three months took place at the garden.

One of the next big challenges, Breazeale had thought, would be the transition into summer as her hands-on WKU students were finishing that class. Thursday, as the event was winding down, she said it may not be as much of a challenge, after all.

“I asked the [WKU] students today who wanted to remain involved and come during the summer to help, and I had three-fourths of the students raise their hands,” she said. “So the key is really going to be how to coordinate. It really comes down to Josh; I mean, Josh is the lynchpin in what makes this thing sustainable, and the jail and Matt and Tracy’s commitment to continuing to work on this project. … There’s going to be more than enough labor to make it work.”

The latter two to whom she referred are Jailer Matt Mutter and Chief Deputy Jailer Tracy Bellamy. The inmates, who have also had classroom time as part of this, will continue to work on the garden, as well, she said.

Josh Johnson, the farm manager, said he believes the project will continue into the fall and possibly expand.

“There’s a lot more space here we could move into,” he said.

The difference in the before and after photos already is visually stark, he said.

“I can’t say enough positive things about this project. … The community that has been cultivated between the students and the inmates and the jail staff has exceeded anything I could have imagined,” Johnson said. “ I hold a lot of hope, and I can’t wait to see it move forward. … It’s the initial stone in the ripple effect that’s going to radiate through Glasgow and the surrounding region.”

He said a lot of the participating students are from adjoining counties, and they will share what they have learned with people around them.

Douglas Smith, head of the WKU Sociology Department, through which Breazeale’s classes are offered, and at least a handful of other WKU staff were at the garden Thursday.

Smith said he was also at the groundbreaking ceremony, and he’s been following the project with social media since then.

“It’s really nice. It’s come along really well,” he said.

Joda Johnson, Barren County Adult Education coordinator and an instructor, no known relation to Josh, said some of the inmates participating in the garden project are also taking GED classes at the jail through BCEA, so she and a few other instructors were there to show their support for them.

“It’s just awesome. I love it. It gives them something to build on when they leave here,” she said.

Lt. Justin Hayes, who coordinates the Class D felon program at the jail, said all of the dozen or so participating inmates – mostly women – are in the Class D program.

“They accomplished a lot more than I thought they would,” he said, noting the two or three limited times per week they had to work on the garden. “I’m pretty proud of them. … I think they’ve all really enjoyed it.”

One person estimated that as many as 80 people attended the event, at which people were encouraged to roam among the plant beds constructed with a variety of materials and even to taste the produce.

Right now, several types of greens — lettuces, kale, spinach — are ready to harvest in the hugelkulture mound, as is cilantro, said Josh Johnson, who serves as garden manager. Some strawberries were ripe in one of the wood-framed beds, as well.

Amanda McGaha, another inmate participating in the project, was providing a tour of the garden to her family members.

“I’ve enjoyed it. It gets us out of the cell, and I’ve interacted with some of the college students, and I’ve gotten close to a couple of them,” she said. “We didn’t expect it to produce this much.”

McGaha’s mother, Connie Garcia, said her daughter was really proud of the work she’d done there.

“She brags about it all the time, and the kids (McGaha’s two sons, who were sampling the strawberries), every time we come by here, they want to see it,” Garcia said. “It’s amazing. It’s really wonderful that the community comes together like this.”

When she gets out of jail on parole June 1, fellow inmate West’s first priority is getting into a residential treatment program.

“The whole staff here really cares about us, and Justin, the Class D coordinator, is helping me get into a program to work on my addiction problems …,” she said. “When I get out, I want to work with my church [in Cave City] and give something back to my community.”

She wants to help open a halfway house for other addicts, West said, and she wants to incorporate a garden into the programming there.

“We [as addicts] need something positive and productive to do to keep us busy,” West said of how this gardening project has helped her. “The garden itself represents growth and new life, and it gives us a way to give back to our communities, because that’s important.”

She wants to share that with other addicts, she said.

Nicole Breazeale, assistant professor of sociology at WKU’s Glasgow campus and coordinator of the project, has had two of her classes involved in different ways. The Sociology of Agriculture and Food class has been working with the inmates and community consultants to literally build and tend the garden. A research methods class, most of the students in which are also in the other class, is evaluating the project and working on a case study it plans to publish.

WKU student Leslie Branham said the words that come to her mind in relation to the project are love, healing, education and being part of a group.

“Mostly, this has spilled over into my everyday life, and I’m going to use [the skills and knowledge],” she said.

Krystal Carver was one of two students in the research methods class of Breazeale’s. Carver’s class has already conducted interviews and focus groups with the various stakeholders for the case study.

“We’re doing to dive into that head first this summer,” Carver said. “It is clearly evident the impact the garden has had on the inmates, students, key stakeholders and the community as a whole.”

Breazeale said what she has learned the most is “how inspiring and healing it is to be part of a community-controlled project, and then to watch connections be built and relationships formed between people who never knew each other and may well have had very strong stereotypes about each other, has just been really amazing to be part of.”

She said she’s really proud of the beautiful, productive garden they created using sustainable agriculture techniques.

“It’s inspired a lot of people and they are trying out all of these techniques at their house and talking with their friends about it and really sparking a whole movement,” Breazeale said.

Details are still in the works for how to ensure the produce is harvested and incorporated into menus at the jail and the community soup kitchen, she said, and she’ll be working on that next week after finals are completed.