BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A rosebush might not seem like a weapon in the war on drugs, but for Ed Miller and his team of landscapers, it will do.

“It brings beauty to the community,” Miller, 59, said as he oversaw the planting of rosebushes on a small plot of land on the corner of Madison and Madeira streets in east Baltimore. “Flowers deter drug dealing,” he said.

Miller, along with a crew of four, build and nurture small urban gardens in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods for a nonprofit organization called Civic Works.

The gardens vary in size and shape. Some encompass several vacant lots with benches and totem poles; others, small slivers of hope with a simple path and a few flowers — like the lot that Miller is currently transforming on Madeira Street.

All are meant to be sanctuaries from the city’s ills.

Jonathan Anderson, 41, a resident of east Baltimore, said the gardens do offer refuge, as he sat on bench next to a labyrinth built by Civic Works behind the Amazing Grace Lutheran Church on Port Street.

“Here I have peace of mind,” Anderson said as he thumbed through a novel, enjoying a warm December afternoon.

“I don’t know why, but for some reason, the park seems to keep drug dealers away,” he said as Miller and his crew picked up odd pieces of trash.

Civic Works employs roughly 200 Americorps workers in projects ranging from after-school tutoring to home rehabilitation and construction in blighted neighborhoods. The group, which is funded through a variety of federal, state and local grants, targets services that its annual report says “would otherwise go undone.” Civic Works’ Land Asset Management Project has been working to reclaim vacant lots by planting gardens for nearly eight years, Miller said. The group claims to have done work on more than 125 lots in the city.

Emily C-D, a landscaper on Miller’s team, said she notices an immediate effect her work has on a community because she hears it.

“People will walk by and say, ‘that’s real nice,’ ” she said.

For C-D, a painter who intends to add her artistic skills to some of the gardens this summer in the form of murals, the appeal is obvious.

“It’s either a trash-filled lot or something is growing,” she said.

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com