Since joining Wilmot Gardens as a regular volunteer in May of 2016, John Bean has dedicated over 1,000 hours to the improvement and maintenance of the gardens. John now spends five hours, three days a week assisting gardener Steve Pritchett with tasks such as weeding, clean-up, mulching and more. “John…
As the newest member of the Wilmot Gardens team, I feel I’ve found my home. I’ve always felt that nature, particularly water and plants, have a healing power. I’ve witnessed this to be true not only for myself, but especially so as a psychotherapist and life coach for people…
A 2017 study by Korpela and colleagues published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning explored how different forms of exposure to nature at work and at home influenced employee vitality, vigor, happiness, and creativity at two samplings one year apart. The researchers’ primary hypothesis tested whether different apparent types…
Despite the persistent warm temperatures in Gainesville, summer has come to an end and we have started our fall programming. It’s been great to see familiar faces as well as lots of new faces and we are happy to be growing again. We have planned our fall plantings – both…
Hurricane Irma has come and gone and those of us associated with the Wilmot Gardens have been able to breathe a giant sigh of relief. With one but very important exception, we experienced no major wind damage or flooding in the gardens including the greenhouse and the conference center. Nevertheless,…
Greetings from the Greenhouse! Once our therapeutic horticulture (TH) programming ends in May, the greenhouse tends to quiet down quite a bit. We still get many summer visitors wandering in to see what’s growing – we’ve even had a good number of sales recently. While we have visitors drop by…
A study published in 2017 by Cox and colleagues, reported remarkable multiple health benefits of nearby nature, such as having a private garden or the amount of neighborhood vegetation cover. The study surveyed 1,023 adults living in Southern England during the month of May. Dose-response analyses accounted for the type of…
In 2012, our team at the Wilmot Gardens initiated a patient care program, therapeutic horticulture. Since that time, the program under the direction of Ms. Elizabeth (Leah) Diehl ably assisted by a host of volunteers has served a diverse group of individuals with various physical and often times mental challenges.
A new study on horticultural therapy (HT) and mental health published in the journal Occupational Therapy in Mental Health in 2017, isn’t a traditional singular study, but a systematic evaluation of many studies published on the topic between 1992 and 2015. Scouring the scientific literature, the authors found 14…
On April 12, 2017, in coordination with UF Campus Earth Day, Elizabeth (Leah) Diehl, the director of the Therapeutic Horticulture Program at the Greenhouse at Wilmot Gardens, was awarded the 2017 Champions for Change Award for the category of Health and Well-Being. The Champions for Change Awards program is an…
