LAKE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Barb and Jerry Miller want to ease out of the business world.
The support agency GentleBrook wants to help its disabled clients work their way in.
So they’ve teamed up to make both goals happen. GentleBrook is in the process of taking over the Millers’ greenhouse near Hartville, Ohio, and the couple is staying on temporarily as managers to help turn their business into a place where adults with disabilities can engage in meaningful work and learn marketable skills.
Under the Millers’ management, a crew of workers — most of them developmentally disabled — work with supervisors on everything from simple chores like sweeping the floor to more complex tasks like harvesting produce. The couple enjoys interacting with the employees, and the workers seem eager to learn.
“We get 10 hugs a day,” Jerry Miller says with a smile.
The five-year transition started in 2014 and will culminate with GentleBrook assuming operation of Miller’s Greenhouse. The deal has further expanded the scope of GentleBrook, an organization based in Hartville that provides housing and supportive services to people with disabilities and older adults.
It has also brought change to the Millers’ growing operation. What used to be a seasonal business is now a year-round venture that raises ornamental plants to sell as well as food to supply GentleBrook’s residential facilities and restaurants.
Some of what the clients grow goes to GentleBrook’s Front Porch Cafe and Front Porch Store in Hartville, which, like the greenhouse, provide opportunities for clients to learn on the job. In fact, everything on the cafe’s popular salad bar comes from Miller’s, said Abby Prulhiere, GentleBrook’s marketing communications coordinator.
“It’s a great arrangement,” Barb Miller said. “And you know, our customers are so open to it.”
On a recent morning, workers busied themselves with the work of transplanting tiny scaevola plants into larger pots. Outside it was snowing, but in the greenhouse the humid air was warm and rich with the smell of earth.
Bob Hale and Triston Young scooped planting mix from a metal bin into plastic containers, working deliberately at their task. Asked what they thought of the work, both broke into grins. “Fun,” they agreed.
Meanwhile, Matt Lashley eased wilted lettuce plants out of their pots, carefully separating plants from soil and depositing each in its proper receptacle. He was dressed in his favorite Miller’s Greenhouse polo shirt, with the logo he likes to tap proudly with his index finger to show everyone where he works.
The number of workers at Miller’s changes with the season, Prulhiere said. In warmer weather employees work in the garden, growing vegetables.
Some will be able to move to other jobs with the skills they develop, she said. Others will probably stay on at Miller’s indefinitely. Much depends on each person’s level of cognitive function.
Prulhiere said the arrangement benefits the public as much as the clients. When customers come to the greenhouse to buy plants, she said, they encounter the workers and see them as people with value and skills.
“It makes them more comfortable around people who have disabilities,” she said.