Photos by JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

James Lugumira plants perennials Tuesday at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center greenhouse in Salem. The veteran works six days a week as part of the Compensated Work Therapy program.

Janice Hairston, an incentive therapy worker at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center greenhouse, makes Thanksgiving centerpieces Tuesday afternoon. The greenhouse sells to the public.

The greenhouse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem isn't exactly an easy place to find.

It's a public business that has been around a long time, and it's open all year long -- but it's tucked away in a quiet square that cars can enter only by passing through a building archway that divides a hospital corridor.

That seclusion, however, seems fitting because the greenhouse is, on several levels, kind of an oasis.

In the spring and continuing into summer, the greenhouse -- a bright, leafy compound surrounded by squat, brick buildings -- boasts an impressive sprawl of perennials and annuals, all of which are grown at the site.

"It looks like a carpet. So many colors," Ann Benois, chief of the center's voluntary section, said of their inventory during peak periods.

But even in off-seasons, the place is a small haven for veterans who might benefit from the therapeutic and vocational aspects of working with plants and maintaining the operation's handful of structures.

Sandy Lane, coordinator of the facility's Compensated Work Therapy program, came to the center in 2000. She shifted the greenhouse's main focus from inpatient to outpatient therapy and, she said, made it self-supporting.

"We had about 8,000 customers last year, but every year it's a little more," Lane said. "Since we're technically nonprofit, all the money we make goes back into the work therapy program. All the money that we make goes into the program to benefit veterans."

The greenhouse employs at least eight veterans full time, year-round, and Lane increases staff to about a dozen during peak seasons.

"We've had male workers, female workers. We've had recent younger veterans. We have one who is over 70," she said.

They learn, among other vocational skills, plant propagation, flower arranging, irrigation, harvesting and transplanting. During warm months, they grow flowers, plants and vegetables; in colder ones, they make garden art, baskets, birdbaths and birdhouses.

Now they're in the midst of poinsettia season.

Of the roughly 1,200 bright red plants they've nurtured and stockpiled -- which sitting together bisect their largest greenhouse like a crimson dividing line -- about 150 will go around the hospital and the rest will be sold to the public.

One of the fixtures at the greenhouse is James Lugumira. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he later came to Boston to study and joined the U.S. Army to cover his tuition. He served as an armorer in Jordan and Somalia, and later volunteered with tribal forces in Rwanda. Lugumira, 51, has been at the greenhouse for four years.

"He plays a major role in irrigation and making sure things are going right. He's kind of my right arm," Lane said and, laughing, added, "And my left arm. Both my legs."

Lugumira said he draws a lot from the work as well.

"I like plants, but I didn't know anything about them. She [Lane] teaches me as I go along. She pushed me to try to learn more," he said. In December, he's scheduled to receive his associate degree in horticulture from Virginia Western Community College.

"I used to be so nervous, but she lets you make mistakes. Knowing mistakes are made, you don't worry so much," he said. "I came into this hospital and my blood pressure was unbelievable. It's almost under control. Plants make me relax and calm down."

Although he didn't want to discuss his military experience, he said, "Right now, I'm not 100 percent the way I was before. I'm 75 percent. I can see things clearer."

A newer member of the crew is Thomas Fowler, 61, of Lynchburg, who joined the Air Force when he was a teenager. He worked as a heating and air-conditioning technician during his service, then lived in Asia and Canada, but lately has been treated for ulcers, depression and substance abuse. He's worked at the greenhouse for six months and said it helps.

"There's no magic cure or we'd all have it," Fowler said. "I get a satisfaction, a sense of enjoyment seeing things go from a seed to a finished product ... although plants are never a finished product."

Fowler said he's been in the process of settling into his apartment, finding the right church and caring for his new plants.

"When I get up in the morning," he said, "I have somewhere to go, things to learn."

Lane plans to extend the program's influence. In the spring, she said, work will begin on a therapeutic research garden on a nearly 2-acre plot of land adjacent to the greenhouse.

It will be used to treat patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries.

The expansion bodes well for the greenhouse as a whole.

"I'm not saying it's all rosy. There are ups and downs," Lugumira said. "But if 95 percent is good, you just throw the other 5 percent away."