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The winter of everyone’s discontent, it was, of course, below freezing outside, but Todd Brusberg was checking the rows of baby Parris Island, Royal Oak Leaf and Firecracker lettuce thriving in the 70-degree temperature and 100-per cent humidity of a new $1,00,000 hydroponic greenhouse here.

“It’s great to be in this green oasis,” Brusberg said. “It’s good to work with your hands on things that are green.”

Brusberg, a former technology consultant who experienced memory loss after surgery on a cerebral aneurysm, is one of 37 trainees in three New Jersey greenhouses tending a riot of vegetables and herbs; they are the vanguard of a $8,00,000 programme with national ambitions. The project, called Arthur & Friends, trains developmentally disabled workers to grow pristine, sustainable produce for restaurants and farmers’ markets. About 200 people have been educated in the art of dirtless farming, and more are waiting to learn.

For each trainee, the journey to the programme is singular. Brusberg, 49, owned a consulting firm in Sparta, New Jersey, installing business communication systems until the surgery. He spent more than a year recovering at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey He said, “It was a little unreal, and I had to get past the ‘why me?’ stage.”

He added that he hopes to restart his business, but meanwhile is “trying to prove to myself that I can still do what I did before, and hoping to use my own expertise in technology in the hydroponic greenhouse,” particularly the facility's electronic control systems. They monitor temperature, humidity and the flow of nutrients that enable plants to thrive without soil, pesticides or herbicides.

Brusberg’s colleagues in the greenhouses include men and women who have dealt with autism, cerebral palsy, strokes, traumatic brain injury, Huntington’s disease and severe bipolar disorder.

The programme calls the trainees “friends” because “they aren’t really clients or consumers, and since many are older, they don’t really answer to the word ‘student’,” said Wendie Blanchard, the non-profit project’s founder and programme director.

The first friend in the programem was Blanchard’s nephew, Arthur Blanchard, 33, who was born with Down syndrome. When he told his aunt how bored he was, toiling in a sheltered workshop popping dog treats like pigs’ ears into plastic bags for five hours a day, they began discussing how he might find a more rewarding job.

“We thought, ‘What would continue to be around in the recession?,’ and we thought — food,” Wendie Blanchard said, recalling their conversation five years later. “We decided we wanted to create something more meaningful.”

Now, Arthur Blanchard’s life has changed. “And I’ve been learning a lot about hydroponic farming and packaging the produce,” he said. “I even do some of the deliveries to local restaurants. There are lots of challenges, but that's good.”

The programme has received more than 100 inquiries from organisations in New Jersey and across the country. Also kicking the tires have been the William J. Clinton Foundation and representatives of Jon Bon Jovi, who sponsors affordable housing for AIDS patients in Newark. Sir Richard Branson, who is constructing a Virgin Spa in Bedminster, checked out the greenhouse in Sussex County, at the New Jersey State Fair Grounds in Augusta, last year.

Over the last four months, revenues from each greenhouse has averaged $1,500 a week, “which is profitable,” Wendie Blanchard said. Profits are reinvested. The programme has applied for grants to establish greenhouses at veterans’ hospitals for disabled military personnel and hopes to establish greenhouses at schools to train developmentally disabled students and to teach healthy eating.

And along with the greenhouse here and the one in Sussex County, there is the Arthur & Friends Urban Greenhouse and Training Center in Orange, in more densely populated Essex County.

“I thought it would also be perfect for urban areas, where there are so many unemployed people, especially ex-offenders and disabled veterans,” said Lorraine Gibbons, co-ordinator of the year-old, 1,800-square-foot Orange greenhouse, which has trained 10 ex-offenders, two of them veterans. “The idea is to keep the entire cycle in the urban community, growing food in the neighbourhoods, distributing it there and selling it there.” The operation has sold to Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan, along with New Jersey restaurants and a farmer’s market in Newark.

The greenhouses grow an assortment of greens including Claytonia, dandelions, basil, arugula, kale, Tuscan kale, curly red Russian kale, cilantro, mizuna, tak soi, bok choy and Swiss chard. The programme provides restaurants with seed catalogs, encouraging them to place custom-blend orders.

“It used to be that you’d wait for the ramps to come up in the spring,” said Andre de Waal, the chef and an owner of Andre’s restaurant in Newton, who has been buying Arthur & Friends greens for eight months. “But now, for 12 months a year we can have this beautiful, fresh produce.” In winter, he said, “to be able to work with a product that is still alive, while you’re serving it, is a very special thing.”