Former addict harvesting his successes

For Donald Barnes, creating a meditation garden at the Hope House addiction rehabilitation center in downtown Atlanta wasn’t just any landscaping job. Barnes knew this small courtyard was a place of peace and solitude for the men coping with drug and alcohol addiction inside. He was one of them.

“Out there in my addiction, I saw so much ugliness. Now I see beauty where I can. And I try to,” said Barnes, 49. “For me, gardening is therapy. And making the Earth a better place is my duty.”

Enlarge this image

Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com

Donald Barnes overcame the demons of addiction through therapy and by focusing on his love of gardening.

Enlarge this image

Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com

Donald Barnes plants a rose bush in the meditation garden at Hope House where he continues to serve as a volunteer.

More Garden stories

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

• Back to Home & Garden page

As he toiled and tilled and turned a once nondescript courtyard into a lily and rose-adorned retreat, he said he also worked through the demons he’d collected in three decades of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. His struggle began as a teenager with a difficult childhood, then later as a military man in the Navy. It continued while working in landscaping in Atlanta bouncing between jobs and homes.

Even during his most desperate years, though, he never sold his weed trimmer and lawn mower, turning to landscaping for income that would often support his habit.

Hope House program director and Barnes’ mentor Wanda Rainey-Reed said when Barnes came to the center in December 2005, she could immediately sense his readiness to dramatically change his life.

“He was tired and he just needed someone to give him the opportunity” to change, she said. “We sincerely felt he was raising from the ashes and wanted a rebirthing of his life.”

At Hope House, Barnes learned how to deal with quitting his addiction and was given a road map to a new beginning, Rainey-Reed said. Within a few months of living at the center on Washington Street, he began to look for ways to use his passion to give back.

Rainey-Reed said she didn’t know about his background in landscaping until he asked for a few plants so that he could revitalize the courtyard garden.

“We look at that as therapy, therapy we couldn’t do sitting in my office,” she said. “He’d come in and nurture the ground and teach other guys who were interested in horticulture. He was getting his needs met while meeting our needs.”

Barnes said part of his motivation came from rumors he heard that government funding would be cut to programs like Hope House.

“People have a misconception of places like that because they think the people there are all bad,” he said. “I wanted people to know that we are productive members of society and we do give back.”

Now just over three years drug and alcohol-free, Barnes credits Hope House with giving him life skills he needs to thrive, everything from dealing with emotional ramifications of his addiction to managing his money and building a professional resume: the types of tools, he said, he didn’t learn in countless previous rehab stints.

“Anytime I would get clean, I felt such extreme shame,” he said. “Being 49 years old and working my whole life with nothing to show for it was stunning.”

Though he has moved on to an independent housing community within Progressive Redevelopment Inc., he continues to maintain the meditation garden at Hope House, where he also serves as a mentor to others. He’s also volunteered his time gardening at the Imperial on Peachtree, another supportive housing development.

Barnes said one of his favorite projects is helping his friend and “adopted grandmother” Cleo Bailey’s West End neighborhood maintain a vegetable garden, a project Bailey said has spawned a network of friendships between former strangers.

“Now when people don’t know the names of the flowers or what to plant, Donald is always right there to help them out,” she said. “I didn’t know he was as smart as he is. He’s come a long way; I knew the other side and this is a drastic change.”

Rainey-Reed said that Barnes realizes the value of another chance at success. “He understands the magnitude that his life has bloomed into something wonderful and meaningful and he wants to give back,” she said.

For his part, Barnes, who says he supports himself on military disability payments, said he hopes to eventually begin his own landscaping company. Until then, he plans to continue volunteering as a mentor to help others rise above troubled pasts.

“If 100,000 people like me were to get their lives together,” he began, “what an impact that would have on this world.”