The Healing Gardens at St. Ambrose
The Healing Gardens are welcoming to all regardless of race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and abilities or disabilities. If you need accommodations for a program, please reach out ahead of time and we will work to find a way to help you to participate comfortably.
Mission
The Healing Gardens at St. Ambrose’s mission is to provide wellness programming grounded in the metaphors of gardening and nature for parishioners and underserved members of our community. We work in all the natural and gardened spaces on our beautiful campus.
Vision
To serve as a model for church and other organizations who wish to provide nature based mental health and wellness services contributing to mental and physical well being.
Therapeutic Horticulture is the practice of using gardening and nature to improve well-being. It can improve your quality of life and deepen your connection to yourself and others.
Services Available out in the Community
- Therapeutic Horticulture program brought to your site
- Consultation on designing Therapeutic Natural spaces at your site
- Presentations on the value of Therapeutic Horticulture for Mental Health and Wellbeing
All programs at 813 Darby St. Sundays begin at 11:45-12:00
April 28: Gardening together
May 19: Gardening together
June 2: Gardening together
June 9: Painting in the garden
June 23: Painting in the garden rain date
No Green Thumb Required
UPCOMING PROGRAMS:
April 28: Gardening together
May 19: Gardening together
June 2: Gardening together
June 9: Painting in the garden
June 23: Painting in the garden rain date
Coming in late summer/early fall
Making tea
Making fig chutney and other out of the garden cooking
on February 11: Honoring our Ancestors and Planting our Grief: Memorial Plant Pot
We learned about historic African American Cemeteries and Gardens and planted our own pot in that tradition.
About
St. Ambrose is a historically black congregation in the heart of Southeast Raleigh. Having experienced environmental racism since being "allowed" to build in the polluted wetlands of Walnut Creek, St Ambrose has fought to improve the lives of the community that surrounds it. First, we worked to clean up the wetland, we now seek to bring healing to the community through access to nature through therapeutic horticulture and our beautiful labyrinth.
Therapeutic Horticulture at St. Ambrose takes place in our newly completed fully enclosed courtyard, our mature perennial gardens, on our labyrinth, with our 3 raingardens or on our open lawns. We also have access to the Walnut Creek Wetland Park.
St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, 813 Darby St. Raleigh, NC 27610, (919) 833-8055
Benefits of Therapeutic Horticulture
Therapeutic Horticulture is a practice that improves mental, spiritual and physical health and wellbeing. Numerous research studies have proven that even passive connections with nature lowers our stress hormones and raises serotonin and dopamine. It lowers blood pressure and improves concentration. For individuals suffering from trauma, it is a gentle and non-threatening way to reconnect to other living things and to reclaim autonomy and the ability to give as well as receive.
TH increases our reverence for God’s creation and calls us to be fierce stewards and protectors of our earth. Working and sharing with others improves and nurtures social connections and decreases loneliness. It also reconnects participants with their bodies and can increase individual’s confidence in their ability to maintain their physical health.
Growing food and herbs can be a tool for improving healthy eating, and it often evokes positive memories, stimulating people suffering from dementia or other cognitive disabilities. Therapeutic Horticulture can be offered to any age and to any ability.
Our programs are both integrated into church events and activities and occur outside of them. Whenever a program has an explicitly religious focus, it is clearly stated in the program description. The majority of our programs are not religiously based.
What is Therapeutic Horticulture?
Therapeutic Horticulture is the practice of using gardening and nature to improve well-being. It can improve your quality of life and deepen your connection to yourself and others.
Why are people of faith called to this work?
God calls us to serve one another, and to care for creation. In the context of our nation’s mental health crisis and the threat of global warming, communities of faith can be powerful actors for positive change. At the Healing Gardens at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, we take inspiration from the fact that Biblically, human’s first home was the garden. God tells us in Genesis 8:22: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” These cycles of nature represent God’s promise to care for the people of the earth. Our connections to those cycles reminds us of the love of God.
At the end of the service at St. Ambrose, we pray a prayer that uses the metaphor of grafting, a horticultural technique that takes the living material from one plant and joins it to grow with the material of another. In our prayer, God’s love literally becomes a part of us and bears fruit. We pray that the word will “ bring forth in us the fruit of good living”. By bearing this fruit, we share God’s promise with others.
November 19
We planted garlic, weeded, and refreshed the pots in the front and side of the building
December 10
We harvested and shared
broccoli, two kinds
of collards and
broccoli greens
On Sunday, November 12, we hosted guests from Botswana.
Our guests and members at St. Ambrose shared stories about plants that are important to us and made a beaded keychain to remind us of that plant.
We also spent time together in the Healing Garden
On Sunday, October 29
We gathered together to create “Containers for Grief”
We shared our stories and planted beautiful planters to remember our loved ones. It was a time of caring for ourselves and one another and enjoying the beauty of nature. At the end of the session, each person took home a beautiful one of a kind planter.
We know that not all loss is a “death loss”. We also lose people who are “there but not there” through addiction, mental health problems, extreme illness and dementia. We lose pets, jobs and dreams. All of these bring grief that deserve acknowledgement and support.
Sunday, June 25, we gathered the plant material to die our Mud Cloth fabric and dug and screened the soil to make our pigments. The day was full of appreciation for nature, fun and laughter.
Sunday, July 16 we ground our dried soil into pigments and died our fabric for the Mud Cloth
Sunday, July 23 we painted, stenciled and stamped our Mudcloth
It then cured for a month before we washed it out and people took them home.
Grief
Creating a Container for Grief
On April 16, we met together to create a plant container that reminded us of a loved one that we lost. First we shared with each other about our person. We were able to support one another in our loss and talk about our own grief process. Then we chose the plant container that appealed to us filled it with soil and added plants. We finished by adding our loved one's name to the planter and sharing our creations with one another. We left feeling closer to our loved ones and to each other.
Our parallel children's program addressed the same issues in a developmentally appropriate manner and was very well received by our participants.
Self Care in the Garden for Mental Health students and Practitioners
On Sunday, April 30, we met to practice self-care in the garden. We selected a plant piece from the garden that appealed to us and did a seeing/drawing meditation. Then we shared about our experiences and finished with arranging a bouquet to take home.
We learned to relax, be in the moment and value ourselves and our own pleasure.
Sharing our Plant Memories
On Sunday, May 21, we met to share important memories of plants with each other. We started by smelling and looking at Rosemary and Lemon Verbena from the gardens, walked around the garden to take in the sights and smells, and then wrote about a meaningful memory. Some people shared about working in the garden as children with their parents, others remember a particular food that was eaten with family, and someone remembered a poignant moment with her mother where she shared about her special plant.
We then created a bracelet, necklace or keychain that symbolized that plant memory. Participants took home their creation to remind them of the ways that plant touched their life.
Therapeutic Horticulture
Therapeutic Horticulture is a practice of using gardening and nature to improve well-being. It can improve your quality of life and deepen your connection to yourself and others. There are lessons that the garden can teach us:
“Gardening teaches us that we cannot always have our own way and yet allows us to feel good about that reality.” (Lewis, Charles. A. Green Nature/Human Nature)
When we pick up a quart of strawberries at the store or the farmer’s market, we go home and wash them and feel frustrated or thwarted if some of the berries aren’t edible. We expect that we will get what we want - which is a quart of delicious, perfect strawberries, exactly like when we buy a pack of Bic pens, we expect them all to work the same way that our last pack of Bic pens worked.
When my children and I pick a quart of strawberries out of our garden, we are delighted and amazed by the perfect ones that we find. We’re astonished by the sweetness. We set the rotten or bitten ones aside for compost or the chickens. We accept that we can’t have our own way - every single strawberry will not be edible - and yet we still feel really good about our reality.
Having learned this through gardening, we have tolerated disappointment that isn’t crushing. We’re rewarded for learning this lesson with the sweet taste of strawberries, the looseness of our muscles, the warmth of the sun on our bodies, the sounds of the outside and a feeling of reward and relaxation.
Another “not having our own way” lesson that the garden teaches us is that of loss. Inevitably, plants die. Bees die. Butterflies die. If we spend time in the garden, we experience life, growth and death. Our wish would be to have the beautiful butterfly forever, just as she is now, but she dies. The gentle way that this lesson is learned - surrounded by the comforting growth of the garden, reassured by the ongoing life around us - helps us to feel joy in our reality in spite of the sadness of loss. One prized plant is chewed by voles while another unexpected plant grows and delights us.
We may expect ourselves to be perfect. We feel that everything we do must succeed. The process of being with plants in the role of caretaker helps us to practice letting go of perfectionism. We may water and weed and a plant still dies. We come to understand that even doing things perfectly may not prevent failure. We learn that we are not in complete control. Because the garden holds so many other rewards, we are able to accept the reality of imperfection. Instead, the plant takes what we offer without judgment and thrives or fails in part due to us and in part due to other factors.
We become one element in a complex system.
All of those experiences we share in the garden bolsters our self esteem and soothes our nervous systems. We become more optimistic and resilient. We learn to value our strong bodies and the health of the environment. By nurturing our garden, we nurture ourselves.
Books We Love and Recommend
We reference these in our work...
The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature by Sue Stuart-Smith
belonging: a culture of place by bell hooks
The Wild Braid: A poet reflects on a century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz
African American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South by Richard Westmacott
Places of the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens by Vaughn Sills
Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison
North Carolina Extension Gardener Handbook published by NC State Extension
Theme Gardens by Barbara Damrosch
Gardening with Native Plants of the South by Sally Wasowski
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Russel Van Der Kolk, MD
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
School Programs
The Healing Gardens works with children ages 4 -18.
Programs Tailored to Your School
Criteria for participation in a school program:
- Children will be accompanied by a staff member from the school
- Groups are capped at 10 children.
Program Concepts
(Programs are not limited to these concepts.
- Fostering relationships between teachers and students.
- Improving self esteem through successful gardening and nature experiences
- Self regulation strategies using nature
- Fine motor skills development
- Gaining skills at following directions
- Greater insight into nature and its connection to our health and wellbeing
- Understanding of where food comes from
- Creative projects
Partners and Funding
Partners
The NC Botanical Gardens
Christ Church
Fuller Elementary School
Root Cause Collective
Donations
We are always in need of donations to support our programming. In kind donations are also welcome. Please contact Kirsten to make a donation. Thank you for your support!
Sources of Funding for this programming
The infrastructure of the Healing Garden was built with a grant from the North Carolina Council of Churches through their Partners for Health and Wholeness Program
Our new equipment and storage shed as well as many of the supplies for programming were purchased with a generous donation from Christ Church Episcopal.
Fall programming and educational materials provided through a grant from the Penny Project Foundation
Individual donations from members of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church
Facility and maintenance provided by St. Ambrose Episcopal Church
City of Raleigh Rainwater Rewards Program provided grants for our cisterns and raingardens