With soil-stained hands, Linda Jones rescues countless California native and drought tolerant plants from gluttonous weeds while propagating the gardens of Ploughshares Nursery.

For three years Jones was homeless. "It's rough out there, always got to look behind you," she said. Two weeks into a work a program, Jones' life is beginning to change. "It's a blessing. There are so many people who don't have a place to stay."

A non-profit, Ploughshares Nursery grows drought-tolerant and native plants for sale to the community. Part of Alameda Point Collaborative (APC), a group providing housing and support services for the formerly homeless, Ploughshares gives on-the-job training to residents wanting to get back on their feet.

After an orientation and various classes, Jones is working five days a week seeding and transplanting, and discovering some ecological principles key to keeping the gardens thriving along the way.

The group teaches "green-collar job skills," according to nursery general manager Michael Anderson, whose solid grasp of horticulture enables him to provide employees with a firm knowledge of the nursery industry.

Lessons range from how to run a cash register and keep a work schedule to understanding soil fertility and basic gardening skills such as pruning and recognizing when to water which plants. Time is also set aside to host a classroom setting, Anderson said, where topics include nursery merchandizing and field trips to botanical gardens.

"Job training was the initial starter. That's what we do first; everything else comes after. But in order to do that, we have to be successful as a business," Anderson said. Despite the nursery's impressive size, Ploughshares can train just two residents at a time for financial reasons, although there's enough work for a dozen people. Anderson hopes to expand the training program and offer services to people in need outside of the organization. He hopes that the nursery will become successful enough to be run independently as well.

The nursery operates with funding frpm to a large federal grant for APC. All profits are funneled back into the organization. The idea is to give more money back to homeless services than the nursery has coming in, Anderson said.

The nursery has advisors including a landscape architect, a small business owner and an agro-ecology professor from U.C. Berkeley who meet monthly.

In the three years since it opened, Ploughshares has grown from offering 30 species of organically grown plants to more than 100. "You won't find any Miracle Grow here," Anderson said.

While the typical customer was once dubbed as "the already converted hardcore environmentalist" said Anderson, more and more typical homeowners are coming in, looking for drought-tolerant plants to cut their water usage.

Although it promotes its work as a noble cause, Ploughshares admits its results are not a panacea. "Not every one person gets a job in landscaping," Anderson said. "Not everyone's a success story."

For Jones, working at the nursery is not only about success; the nursery grants her peace of mind. Her example rejects the clichés of a typical sob story. In dealing her own struggles, Jones has a down-to-earth outlook, "I'm going to see where this takes me, or basically, where I take myself." Quoting her mother's repetition of lyrics from a Billie Holiday song, Jones said, "God bless the child that's got his own."