Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
How A Botanical Nonprofit Uses Nature To Support Mental Health, Veterans, And Local Schools
A garden can be a classroom, a clinic, and a kitchen—often in the same morning. We open the gate to Gardens of Hope, our 501(c)(3) botanical nonprofit in Perris, California, and share a practical update on how nature-based care is helping veterans, students, and neighbors build real skills and steady health. From a nine-week ecotherapy program with county partners to hands-on life skills training through the PALS initiative, you’ll hear how therapeutic horticulture turns soil, seeds, and routine into calm, confidence, and community.
We walk through the expanding slate of workshops—yoga, sound baths, Reiki, indigenous toolmaking, and permaculture—plus a new homeschool collaboration building self-watering raised beds tied to charter-school credit. A women’s monthly circle is in the works, pairing garden-grown herbal tea with a traditional temazcal sweat and simple, effective skincare demos. For those seeking deeper resets, we host intimate retreats with tent camping, mindful practice, and time to slow down under open sky.
Behind the scenes, we’re launching a grant-backed microgreens lab that trains veterans to grow nutrient-dense greens year-round for home use or small business. We’re also scaling plantings of medicinal, culinary, and tea herbs and inviting support for seeds, tools, and volunteer coordination. Because we operate as a transparent nonprofit with a Platinum Candid profile, donations are tax-deductible, and contributors often head home with plants, soil, or microgreens as a thank you. If you’re local, join a volunteer day that ends with a potluck and an art project. If you teach, bring your course to a space where learning meets living ecosystems.
Want to be part of the work? Subscribe for updates, share this episode with someone who needs a gentle nudge outdoors, and leave a review so more people can find community-centered, nature-based care.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today I will be just hosting the show. Um I want to thank everybody that's been supporting the show. We've been growing a lot. And if you've been listening, you realize that we've had a huge number of new guests and uh a select number of returning guests, and it's really the community starting to grow. Um just the way I had hoped and envisioned that it would. And um I've been getting a lot of inquiries from people uh that are listening to the show going, what's up, Joe? How come you don't talk about Gardens of Hope? And you know, the truth is um for everybody who knows me, I've been um battling cancer and spending a lot of time and energy on that. And while I'm putting a lot of energy into Gardens of Hope, it's additional energy to talk about it. But I realized that I haven't been putting a newsletter out, I really haven't been doing anything to let people know what's going on out here. So I thought it's time that might not be real long episodes, but we'll see where we go. Um, so I'm gonna give a little update, best as I can, right now. And uh, for those of you who don't know, Gardens of Hope is a 501c3 nonprofit uh botanical garden located in Paris, California. And uh we offer therapeutic horticulture and education to those in need, and we specifically uh work to make all of our services for free for veterans, and um, you know, we do all kinds of great things out here, and it is all tied to healthy living and the healthy living community, and frankly, I should be talking about it more. So um let's just look at some of the things in a nutshell because I'm assuming plenty of you who are listening right now don't know the first thing about it. So we do have a website, thegardensofope.org, and uh I'm working with a small team on uh updating the website, making the calendar accurate, and uh we're gonna be putting posts out. If we do have a newsletter that we're um assembling right now, and you can sign up for that on the front page of the new of the website down on the bottom. I encourage you to do that because that's where we'll be sharing most of the new information as it comes out. Um programs that we currently offer include uh an ecotherapy program, which is uh put on by the Riverside or sorry, Paris uh Valley Family Family Behavioral Clinic and sponsored by the Riverside County Department of Mental Health, or I think it's just the Department of Health. Anyways, um I worked with their director, Thaddeus Wiki, in developing this program. And uh generally it involves a nine or ten, I think it's a nine-week closed program where they bring in um patients for nine weeks in a row, and they go through a series of exercises, um, activities, and the gardens provide not only a venue, a location to do some of these activities, which often include walking in nature and writing things down, making little art projects, all kinds of things. And also we provide activities for the patients as needed. So sometimes we work together and we plant or clean or or uh transplant or any number of things, and we connect it all to the things they're working on, and you know, really therapeutic horticulture is all about the notion that being in nature enhances any therapy, and being in nature is therapeutic all by itself, and it's not so much that gardens of hope, the location is uh exclusive to this, it's getting you to recognize um go out in nature yourself, go to the beach, go to the park, go to the mountains, go to the desert, go someplace where plants grow and animals live, and you will, and preferably a place that has some water, that's generally a sign of a healthy uh spot of nature in some way or another. And uh so that is a program. And if you're local here, um you can reach out to the clinic um for more information. And if you're not, uh we're looking to engage with other uh practitioners, other clinics uh to the area, local to the area. And this is something that you know is done in person. So you'd have to be close enough to drive here regularly to make that happen. Um, next we have the PALS program, which is an acronym for Pathways for Adult Life Skills, and this is through the Paris Valley High School District, and it's essentially 18 to 21-year-old uh special needs kids that are, I think they're funded by the state of California to get job and life skills training, and they partner with various companies and organizations, and basically they provide volunteers, and the company provides some training. And we've been doing this now for I believe going on three years, and uh the program uh took off, uh expanded quite a bit. We had a number of volunteers helping out uh a year and a half ago or so, and then I got diagnosed, and we had to shrink things back, and eventually we we had to take a little hiatus for a few months while I was recovering, and uh we restarted a couple of months ago, and we're starting off slow and we're working on training some new uh volunteers that want to commit to being a part of this. Uh, they come out here every Thursday morning, and um we love working with these guys. We were working with a group called Inclusion Advocates for a while, and we may um restart that program at some point, and they had a similar program, but it was an older, I think it was 20 to 50, and uh they have some fairly severe cases, but again, everybody that's come out here for um you know, when it comes down to um whether it's education therapy or whatever, it's really been great and uh better than expected. We also have hosted numerous workshops here, um, from you know, indigenous medicine tools to uh planting, you know, we we have a small permaculture farm and um we grow vegetables, herbs, microgreens, and as my health improves, I'll be offering more and more classes and workshops. So that's been a little sparse lately, but we've had um other groups come out, we've had yoga workshops, we've had sound baths out here, um, we've had toolmaking workshops and others, um Reiki workshops, all kinds of stuff. And so again, if you're an instructor and you're interested in hosting um any sort of a class or workshop, and it doesn't necessarily have to be health-oriented because education is also a focus, but you know, clearly anything that has to do with health will be enhanced. We're also working with a homeschool network, and uh, we've donated a section of our land as to use for this group, and they are in the process of constructing a self-watering raised bed garden project, and they're in the process of getting certified um to teach classes and workshops um to get credit for charter schools, and that's gonna open up a number of doors um for funding and and uh expanding programs. They have set up one raised bed that has yet to be planted, but it's in place, and we're a little bit on a on a hiatus while we're waiting for their approval, but I they're always welcome to come out here and work on their project. Um we're in the process of coordinating a women's group that will be uh, if it works out the way it looks like, it's gonna be a monthly activity. It's going to involve an herbal tea um setting where we'll be harvesting tea herbs from our garden and making tea for the ladies, and then a Temiscal or sweat lodge, and that's one of the services we offer, and then um some demonstration of a skincare technique or product or both, and it'll be sort of a you know, after the sweat, you're gonna get a little bit of a spa treatment, and so we're working the details on that out currently, but that'll be upcoming um hopefully soon, less than a month or so. We have also hosted numerous retreats, um private and group retreats. Um we've done. Excuse me. We've done some small family and very small group retreats of just one to two people um for a day or two days. We've also done some group retreats, numerous ones, and they can involve anything from spiritual groups, plant medicines, um sweat lodge, any number of activities. Uh usually it's uh tent camping as we're working on getting some different amenities available, but for now it's it's tent camping and and you know just being here for the duration. Um we have volunteer days and and volunteer programs. A lot of the volunteer activity has been kind of one-on-one as my um strength and abilities have been diminished recently, but um as they grow, we'll be putting on more and more group events. We have a lot of group events and activities planned and um or in the planning stages, I should say. Our calendar on the website is fairly accurate and um it's accurate as it is, but it's we're working on keeping it updated as new activities and events are being scheduled. Um we have a small farm that requires a lot of care. We're getting ready to begin a project of planting uh significant significant number of tea herbs and edible herbs and medicinal herbs, and this has always been part of our um plan and program, and we're working on uh fundraising for um sorry, I'm saying um a lot, but it's it's my chemo brain right now. Uh working on fundraising to secure the required uh resources necessary for that. And that includes seeds and plants and pots and tools and volunteer time and all of that. So remember we're a 501c3 and we can give a full tax write-off for any donations, whether it's a service donation, a cash donation, a uh donation of tools or resources, um, all of those things. You know, we're not asking for something for nothing. We're gonna give you back not only a tax break, but generally anybody who participates here has access to all of the plants and soil and and microgreens and things that we offer. Uh, we always send you home with something as well. Um so as far as volunteers go, we've got to sign up on the website. We also are in the process of scheduling a monthly event that will involve uh two to three hour volunteer workshop, and then we love to share a potluck meal and fellowship, so there will be that involved, and then probably we'll be offering some sort of an art project activity afterwards, so it'll be a most of the day event that you can show up for part or all, and uh in exchange for your volunteer time, you know, we are able to offer some of the good things that this garden has to offer. And then we have our microgreens program, and we recently received a grant to fund a an indoor uh microgreen setup. It's a small research and development size, but it's opening the door for year-round microgreen production and making the workshop and microgreens available for veterans free of charge. And so we've purchased a number of seeds and um received a number of donations of equipment, and we're in the process of planning and preparing for that. We're expecting by the year's end uh at least to have a basic uh system set up and begin production there. We will be scheduling this workshop. A workshop's going to include uh basically uh start to finish how to grow microgreens for yourself as for personal use or possibly even a business. We will offer um hands-on, we'll walk you through the whole program that we have, give you microgreens to try out, and we'll also be providing all of the workshop participants with a uh a tray set up and soil and seeds so that they can at least set up one tray of their own, and we'll also have available additional seeds and trays, etc. So these are these are all things that are actively in motion. We're working with a number of facilitators and um instructors on setting up some new courses and workshops. We're looking forward to all that, and as the time progresses, this is gonna unfold a lot. So, like I said, this is a sort of a just a really bare bones update as my sort of feeble right now brain is able to set out. But we're excited. We have a lot of people that are coming around. We've been given garden tours, we're looking to establish partnerships with organizations and companies, and you know, end of years coming up, where we're finalizing a uh donation flyer. So if you're a business or know of a business, a lot of times a business will set up uh some kind of a matching uh donation for employees to select nonprofits, and certainly we welcome that. And it's also if you're a small business or a large business or an individual and are looking for that year-end tax write-off, we can offer that as well. So uh this is all available. We're registered with candid, or they used to call it Guide Star on a platinum level, which means we're fully transparent, we're vetted through them. And if you want to look us up, that's we welcome that. There's a link on the website for that as well. So again, thegardensofope.org. We're on Instagram, YouTube, and the website is our, and I guess Facebook too, our primary points of contact. Um we've got a phone numbers, emails, volunteer signups. We can also satisfy community service hours, and we're in the process of um working with some interns. So if you're interested in any of these things, please let us know. And I think I'm gonna cap this episode short and keep it to where hopefully it's cogent enough for you to listen to the end. I want to thank everybody that's made this podcast possible and all of your support. And remember that there are subscriber episodes and ways to support this through subscription. And if not, you know, listen, talk about it, share the link, let people know about the Healthy Living podcast. Thank you all, and we will see you next time.
