People usually buy roses for their blooms, not because of who raised them. But those who buy Rose Hill roses are getting more than just another floribunda and grandiflora.

The roses are grown at Rose Hill Center, a private, nonprofit rehabilitation and treatment facility near Holly for people with serious psychiatric disorders.

For the second year, Rose Hill residents have raised 1,000 bare-root roses, nurturing them to blooming size for shipment to three English Gardens stores in suburban Detroit.

A resident named Kenneth served as a work crew leader from February to May on the rose project. The slender, soft-spoken man admits that in a way he hated to see the roses loaded onto trucks for shipment to stores in West Bloomfield, Clinton Township and Royal Oak. "It was an integral part of my day," says the 51-year-old, who formerly worked as a physician's assistant. However, Kenneth, who is being treated for depression, is proud of the group effort and the roses' quality.

He has reason to feel that way. According to Mike Bovio, purchasing manager for roses and perennial plants for the English Gardens chain, the 1,000 Rose Hill roses sold out last year and probably will this year.

"They're beautiful roses," Bovio says of the plants, which sell for $19.95.

The Rose Hill horticulture crew is one of five that Rose Hill residents work on for 6 hours a day. Other crews work in the kitchen, maintain the grounds, do housekeeping or take care of the cows, pigs, horses and other animals that live in the Rose Hill Center barn.

It's called work therapy, an integral part of Rose Hill's rehabilitation treatment program, which also includes psychiatric therapy, medication and education of residents about their illnesses. The most common diagnoses are schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, major depression and bipolar disorder.

Through work therapy, residents learn or relearn how to show up for work on time and practice getting along with co-workers and supervisors, skills that will help them once they graduate from Rose Hill and live independently.

Few other facilities in the country focus on this type of psychiatric rehabilitation, according to Manuel Tancer, associate chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University. He says the concept deserves wider use.

"The model is one that was done for hundreds of years because it does give people self-esteem and self-worth and the sense of being an active participant," Tancer says.

Seed is planted in friendship

The idea for the Rose Hill roses, a break-even project for the rehab facility, grew out of a friendship between John Darin, president of English Gardens, and Dan Kelly, who founded Rose Hill with his wife, Rosemary.

It may be unusual for a couple to start a psychiatric rehab facility. But the Kellys of Bloomfield Hills had the best reason in the world: Their child needed treatment.

From the time he was a toddler, John had a learning disability, Rosemary Kelly says. He also had perseverance. When he graduated from high school in Royal Oak, a joyous mother and son ran down Woodward Avenue, waving John's diploma in the air.

But in his 20s, John developed hallucinations and was hospitalized with paranoid schizophrenia. His parents searched for a treatment center, placing him in the Institute of Living in Connecticut, then at Gould Farms, a working farm in Massachusetts where residents help take care of a farm and gardens. At Gould Farms, with new medication and work therapy, John improved.

But the Kellys, who also have three daughters, wished John was not so far away so he could be part of family events like birthdays and barbecues. This motivated them to start a facility in Michigan.

Dan Kelly, an executive with accounting firms in Detroit, had long been active on boards of various community groups. To raise money for Rose Hill, he and his wife began making the rounds within their wide circle of friends. They wanted to drum up support for a treatment facility, but they also wanted to get people to talk openly about mental illnesses, Rosemary Kelly says.

The Kellys found a 372-acre wooded, rolling parcel of land with three lakes in Holly Township, convinced the owner to sell it and got 12 friends to sign the mortgage with them. Buildings went up, and Rose Hill Center opened in 1992.

The campus includes a community center with a dining room, administrative offices and rooms for residents on the second floor. There are two additional residence halls. Townhouses have space for 20 former residents to live independently but still be in the Rose Hill community.

The barn, outbuildings and greenhouses are near a farmhouse with more transition housing. Last fall, an education and therapy center opened with computer stations, a library, art and music therapy classrooms and a gym.

Though some residents may not have worked much previously, others have high school and college degrees and careers that their illnesses interrupted. Resident Kelly, 39, was a professional chef on corporate jets until being hospitalized with bipolar disorder. "I want to be able to step into society slowly," he says. At Rose Hill, he is on the kitchen crew. "This keeps you up to speed, so when you go back, you're not so devastated."

In the past 9 years, 371 people have been admitted to Rose Hill; most come from Oakland and Wayne counties, sometimes directly from hospitals. The largest age group is 18-40, and residents stay an average of 9-12 months.

It costs $155 a day ($180 for a single room), not including medication, to stay at Rose Hill, which is licensed by the state as a mental health group home. Insurance rarely covers the cost.

Some families foot the bill. A church paid the fee for one resident, who was a church member. The Amish community sponsors its members who are treated there. Others are sponsored by their county community mental health organizations.

To qualify for admission, residents must be in a stabilized condition and willing to participate in the program. They progress through three stages, with increasing responsibilities and privileges. Finally, staff members work with them to find jobs. Some are employed in Holly, but return to Rose Hill regularly for therapy, support and social interaction.

Staff are sometimes asked why residents don't get paid for the work they do.

Gayle Flanigan, development director at the facility, has the answer. "We're a community, and everyone contributes to the community. It's so much a part of our therapy, structuring the day, giving them something useful to do." In contrast, many people elsewhere with mental illnesses are warehoused with little to do except watch TV and smoke cigarettes, she says.

Of course, work therapy isn't for everyone. Some potential residents don't want to work or are not physically able. However, several residents say they appreciate the structure and sense of achievement.

"You get into the same routine of waking up in the morning. This is where most of our time is spent. The time goes by fast," says Jared, a 20-year-old with schizoaffective disorder who is on the kitchen crew. People with schizoaffective disorder have some symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hearing voices, as well as extreme mood swings.

Christopher, 23, who has schizophrenia, says the work assignments are not stressful but do have some requirements.

"Overall, I think it's the responsibility that provides the therapy," says Christopher, a member of the grounds crew. "It's very structured. There are no security guards, no locked doors. It's more like a college dorm."

Rose Hill currently has 51 residents. Since it opened, about 250 people have stayed at the facility longer than 3 months. Of those, 170 graduated from the program, Flanigan says. Most of the others had planned discharges to other services like group homes.

The majority of successful graduates were employed or in school, according to a 1997 study of Rose Hill residents by Dr. Cynthia Arfken, an associate professor at Wayne State's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. Arfken began a longer-range follow-up study on Rose Hill's residents on June 1.

A success story

Mary Kay Ulrich's son Cliff graduated from Rose Hill this spring after a year of treatment. He moved into his own apartment and holds a job. Now in his 40s, Cliff has been bipolar for 20 years. Bipolar disease is marked by extreme mood swings.

"I just saw my son - who was right down in the deep, black pit - come up and rise above it," says Ulrich, who lives in Southfield. Cliff continues to visit Rose Hill for medication, counseling and Friday group programs.

Nearly $9 million in private money - individual, corporate and foundation contributions - has been given to Rose Hill since its inception.

The staff has grown to 49 full-time and about 10 part-time employees, including two psychiatrists who work there 3 days a week: David Ballenberger, the executive director; and Paula Wollin, the clinical director, a psychiatric nurse with a master's degree in psychiatric mental health nursing. There are four case managers and a variety of support staff members. The crew leader for horticulture is a master gardener. There is also a staff horticulturist.

John Kelly, now 40, lives in his own house at Rose Hill, where he is on the staff. Every day, he rotates as needed through the work crews and continues to benefit from being part of the Rose Hill community.

John understands that facing mental illness is a challenge for individuals and their families. He helps newcomers make the transition to resident. John is the "heart of Rose Hill," his mother says, since his illness motivated the family and others to address the need.

"All of these people I see getting getter, the glow coming back into their eyes - it never would have happened without John's illness," Rosemary Kelly says.

Later this summer, not far from John Kelly's house, the residents and staff at Rose Hill Center will create a rose garden for their personal enjoyment. The plants have been raised in the Rose Hill greenhouses by the horticulture crew.

Once the bushes, soil and mulch are in place, the rose garden will begin to show yet again what work and nurturing can achieve, given the right surroundings.