See Thao walked along the edge of a garden at the end of a block in central Fresno, her smile as big as the sunflowers growing among the rows of vegetables.
"I love farming," she said.
The garden at Fresno Interdenominational Ministries on Fresno Street -- one of six Fresno County horticultural therapeutic gardens -- is shared by 10 families, including Thao's. At a celebration for the first harvest last week, she showed what she'd planted: cilantro, onions and taum lag, a Hmong green bean.
And as the crowd watched Hmong dancers and ate a meal prepared from the garden's bounty, Thao talked about what no one could see growing.
"Coming here for farming helps me with my depression because staying home makes me feel very frustrated," said Thao, 37, who came to Fresno in 2004 from a refugee camp in Thailand. "Coming here makes me happier.
Mental health officials say reducing depression and isolation among the Hmong, Slavic, African-American and Hispanic communities is why Fresno County is spending thousands of dollars in mental health funds on therapeutic gardens.
"A lot of the elderly have a lot of feeling of helplessness and hopelessness here in America," said Ghia Xiong, a psychologist at the Fresno Center for New Americans and project director of a garden at McCall and McKinley avenues.
Xiong, who interpreted for Thao, said many Hmong refugees were farmers. Thao said she has farmed since she was 8 years old. But today, Thao lives in an apartment with her seven children.
Most refugees live in apartments, Xiong said. And many of the adults spend their days alone while spouses or adult children work and children or grandchildren are at school, he said.
A garden is a place where they feel at home, Xiong said. "They can go and help and do some farming or just go and walk around it."
For years, the Hmong community has asked Fresno County mental health officials to build a garden, said the Rev. Sharon Stanley, executive director of the interdenominational ministries. The six gardens are the first therapeutic gardens built in the county, and a state official said she knows of only one other built for similar mental health purposes -- in Calaveras County.
Fresno County officials say the gardens are natural places for mental health support groups to form and for people to learn about services in a non-stigmatizing arena.
Through the gardens, the county hopes to reach people who ordinarily shun mental health services, said Karen Markland, a manager in the county's Department of Behavioral Health. The county has budgeted $180,653 in Mental Health Services Act funds this fiscal year for the six sites, she said.
Mental Health Services Act funds are collected from a tax on millionaires and distributed by the state to counties. Last year, the county received $33 million. By law, 20% of the money must be spent on prevention and early intervention. The county spent about $7 million for 12 such programs last year, including about $135,000 for the gardens.
Horticultural therapy isn't a new concept. Gardening as a means of therapy for the disabled and others has been around at least 38 years. But some question whether spending mental health money on gardening -- especially during tight economic times -- is a wise use of funds.
Curtis A. Thornton, chairman of the Fresno County Mental Health Advisory Board, has been a skeptic.
"I've asked the department to furnish reports on what's been transpiring and what they've been doing to really ensure that there really is a mental health focus there," he said.