Patrick Bassaloff is proof that gardening is good for what ails you. In his case, it is a traumatic brain injury.

Mr. Bassaloff, 46, is one of the residents at Walton West Transitional Living Center who use gardening as therapy. He explained that the caring and nurturing of plants is helping him relearn tasks that the injury prevented him from accomplishing.

"With a traumatic brain injury, all your thinking has to be relearned," said Mr. Bassaloff, who cracked his skull when he fell from the top of a tractor-trailer on March 12. The blow knocked out his short-term memory.

"It's hard for people to understand, because you can't see it," he said. He described it as waking up with a nasty hangover every day .

Through gardening, he's increasing a number of life skills, including memorization and motor skills, while having fun.

Mr. Bassaloff and other residents tend to a variety of plants in a greenhouse. Some of their plants are sold at the Walton Rehabilitation Hospital and at the Sacred Heart Garden Festival.

Mr. Bassaloff's favorite greenhouse plant is coleus, but the real pride and joy for him, the other residents and staff is the vegetable garden beside the greenhouse.

Jennifer Litchfield, Walton West's director, said the vegetables were started indoors in February from seed. They planted the seedlings in the garden when the temperature warmed. They've had zucchini a dozen different ways and are still thrilled to find new zucchini to harvest, she said.

"The staff is just as happy as we are," Mr. Bassaloff said.