Tim and UC Santa Cruz: The solitary Garden

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Perched on a slope at UC Santa Cruz overlooking Monterey Bay, Solitary Garden is a participatory public sculpture and garden project by award-winning artist jackie sumell in collaboration with Tim Young, who is currently on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison, fighting to prove his innocence in the California appellate court system.

“I pictured myself at Solitary Garden.... I sat on the bench and I overlooked the garden in solitude. I meditated. I walked around the structure, taking in the panoramic splendor of all the flowers and plants. And then, I did what I’ve been dreaming of for so long. I squatted down and felt the earth. I picked up the soil and let it sift through my hands. It has been 21 years.”

–Timothy James Young

Tim Young and Friends: Solitary Garden Plant Book

Since August 2019, Tim has written letters to students and staff at UCSC about the garden that is being grown on his behalf. Read about how the garden fosters Tim’s hopes of growing a movement to end solitary confinement.
art by Joss Borys

Tim Young and Friends Spring 2021 Plant Book
The solitary Podcast

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz now has a podcast about Solitary Garden with Tim Young. Created by Zaarin, a student and intern at the IAS, the podcast features conversations with friends of Tim’s about prison abolition, activism, and friendship. Episode 1, in which Tim talks about the garden, is now available.

Solitary Garden's Podcast
Visualizing Abolition

For the 2020/21 academic year, UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with Gina Dent, associate professor, feminist studies, is pleased to present a series of online events featuring artists, activists, scholars, and others united by their commitment to the vital struggle for prison abolition.
The events accompany Barring Freedom, an exhibition of contemporary art on view at San José Museum of Art October 30, 2020-April 25, 2021, and Solitary Garden, a public art project at UC Santa Cruz.
source: ias.ucsc.edu

Visualize
jackie sumell's gardens

Fueled by the desire to keep alive the legacy of Herman Wallace, The Solitary Gardens, turns solitary confinement cells into garden beds that are the same size and blue-print as the cell Herman, and so many others spend decades in. The contents (plants, flowers and herbs) of the prison-cell-turned-garden-bed are designed by prisoners serving their sentences in isolation through proxies on the outside. Central to this project is a call to end the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement, simultaneously inspiring compassion necessary to dismantle systems of punishment and control.
source: solitarygardens.org

Explore her work
Tim's Solitary Playlist

Tim’s playlist curated with the solitary garden and abolition in mind

Open Spotify