As the young boys around her munched on a snack of leafy vegetables that they themselves had grown, Nancy Myers - suntanned and smiling - scanned the edges of her community garden and recalled its previous state. "This lot was covered with liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia," she explained. "It was a disaster. But here we are, three years later and now we have 61 adults and 60 children with their own plots - and an age span that runs from 5 to 95."

I was visiting Nancy in her adopted hometown of Hartsville, South Carolina, and hearing about the community garden where a hand-selected group of at-risk boys have been spending two hours every week outside, under the sun, to tend the first thing in their entire lives that they could fully call their own. "They're learning a lot about the natural world," Nancy continued, the boys gathering around her feet like electric eels, their energy barely containable. "But this has gone way beyond gardening. What these boys need can't be fulfilled by any one program."

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