Rudolph Simmons and Sinclair Russell know well the taste of victory - it tastes just like fresh black beans.

The pair took home several ribbons for their home-grown vegetables at the recent Annual Exhibition including a blue ribbon.

Mr. Simmons is a community based client of the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute (MWI) and Mr. Russell lives at MWI. Mr. Russell, Mr. Simmons and a small group of other MWI clients, grew the vegetables in a garden in a courtyard at the facility.

met up with the two gardeners and staff members at the MWI as Mr. Russell and Mr. Simmons showed us their small vegetable garden with a great deal of pride.

?Our corn isn?t very high yet and already it has corn husks,? said Mr. Simmons who works as a gardener in the community, helping to pull weeds and keep hedges back around a dentist office.

?We have been gardening for about three years,? said Mr. Russell. ?We come out here about almost every day. We are growing black beans, string beans, greens, broccoli, corn and spinach.?

Mr. Simmons was, in his own words, ?tickled? to win the ribbons this year, but next year he has bigger plans.

?Next year I am going for the cup,? he said, ?even if I have to push myself. I might push myself by growing something a little different the next time around.?

MWI started the gardening programme within the facility a couple of years ago.

?We had a women?s group that was interested in beautifying out there,? explained Robbyn Lee, occupational therapist at MWI.

?The guys go out to the courtyard to relax. In January 2004 the women?s group started to plan what they would do in the small space.

?We went to Aberfeldy Nursery and took workshops in how to care for indoor and outdoor plants.?

Various kind benefactors in the community pitched in and donated gardening supplies, tables, umbrellas and construction materials to create a shady spot.

?We are very grateful to the community for all their help,? said Ms Lee. ?Without them we couldn?t have done all this.?

Today, there are three gardens in the courtyard, a vegetable, herb and butterfly garden. Clients were delighted when the first monarch butterfly appeared the other day.

At first, the soil in the courtyard was not perfect for cultivation, so some ground work had to be done before vegetables would grow.

?The ground was very hard,? said Mr. Simmons. ?We had to put fertiliser into the soil to make the soil more rich. We didn?t have any problems with insects, although we do have a problem with snails coming around. We put snail bait outside the garden.?

Belinda Brown, community support worker at MWI said: ?We say our garden is organic because we don?t use any pesticides. An expert would probably say it wasn?t organic, because we only just started this policy.

?I put my finger to it sometimes. Sometimes when I am feeling stressed I?ll come out here and work on the garden. It does make you feel better.?

Mr. Simmons said he likes any kind of gardening, vegetable or otherwise.

?If the time comes, I might put my hand to planting flowers,? he said. ?I might put flowers around the vegetable garden. I like to work with everything, vegetables and flowers.?

Mr. Simmons, who is 64-years-old, said gardening often makes him forget his cares.

?Sometimes I feel down and out,? he said. ?When I come out and make a start on the garden I always enjoy it. It is good exercise. Once I start working on the garden I don?t want to stop.

?It feels good to get moving. It does get hot out here, though, in the summer. I don?t mind working in the rain, but the summer heat is harder to take.?

The garden is viewed with a great deal of respect from the other clients. Pinched vegetables aren?t a problem. Sometimes the other clients also help with the gardening.

?One day when we were out gardening, one of the clients asked me a riddle,? said Mr. Russell. ?He said, ?what is it that is not edible in your garden?? The answer was the soil - that?s the only thing in the garden that you couldn?t eat.?

Not long after the Annual Exhibition, Mr. Russell and Mr. Simmons picked some of the vegetables and cooked them in the MWI kitchen. Mr. Simmons loves cooking, as his mother was a cook.

?We had cauliflower, kale and rice, and made up something to eat,? said Mr. Russell. ?We made a cauliflower casserole and some other things.?

The black beans come in a fleshy green pod with red markings. Mr. Simmons said you can eat them whole after boiling them on the stove on a high flame.

?You just add a little salt and seasoning,? he said. ?I got my first exposure to gardening through my mother. She had me out gardening when I was about 16 or so.

?It gave me a chance to see how gardens are grown. It gave me a little experience.?

The gardening programme at MWI acts as exercise and stress relief for the clients and informal therapy. The MWI gardens were started in January 2004 by a community-based woman?s group.

?It was started by clients who come to our day programme,? said Ms Lee. ?The idea was to create a relaxed, stimulating project for the clients to enjoy. We wanted to provide a sense of accomplishment and achievement by allowing the clients to participate with the planning, execution and production of the garden.?

Clients see to the upkeep of the garden and make sure the courtyard area is clean.

?From a therapists? point of view the gardening provides us with the opportunity to access clients? motor skills and their work tolerance and how they follow directions,? said Ms Lee.

Skills that clients develop while working in the garden may also be used to gain employment in the community.

Mr. Simmons and Mr. Russell have also been helping with the herb garden.

Clients grow a number of things in the herb garden including different parsley varieties and lemon balm, which looks a bit like mint and smells like lemon when you break the leaves.When the visited much of the parsley had already been cut, or was just growing back.

On Good Friday clients sold some of the parsley to friends and family to be used for fish cakes.