>>We've heard Wood Thrush, Acadian flycatcher.

You're hearing interior forest birds that are telling you that this is good habitat, because they wouldn't be here otherwise.

(birds chirping) >>Whoo, look at that dude.

Alright buddy, let's find the more potatoes in here.

>>This becomes more of an experience than the teacher telling you to work on your math homework.

You may be learning still, but it's not the same type of demand.

>>Production funding for "Virginia Home Grown" is made possible by- (birds chirping) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Welcome to Virginia Home Grown.

Today we're exploring the benefits of time spent outside how - being in the garden or in nature can improve our health and mental well-being.

Shana Williams visited Saint Joseph's Villa in Richmond to learn about their gardening program for students with specialized educational needs.

Let's take a look.

(wind chimes ringing) (birds chirping) >>Alright, Xavier, you can put them in the bucket, buddy.

Nice.

Alright, let's set those down.

Alright, buddy, let's find more potatoes in here.

There you go.

Nice!

Good job, man.

Alright, let's look and pick some more, man.

In the general public school system, there's just a box and everyone has to fit in that box, and a lot of the students here at the Villa don't necessarily fit in that box.

And so we're trying to do it in a different way, right, and that requires a lot of patience, it requires a lot of empathy.

I think that's the most important piece.

Nice!

>>That kiwi tunnel produces a hairless kiwi.

>>Okay.

>>And basically, it takes us all year to October and we eventually in October will get the sweetest kiwi you'll taste.

>>Oh, wow.

>>If you actually step in the tunnel, it's about 10 degrees cooler inside that tunnel.

It's a shelter space.

It's a shadow space.

It's more of a therapeutic space for them to engage and get a respite from the sounds around, they get a respite from the people who are around them.

They just need that escape for a moment, and that tunnel kind of can kind of serve as that escape point for them.

>>You have a beautiful space here at St. Joseph Villa and this garden got started a number of years ago.

Will you please share with me the history of this location?

>>At one point, what we're standing on, it was a sand volleyball court and a bunch of clay with construction vehicles parked on it.

We looked at this space and we said, "What can we do here that could benefit our students?"

So about 10 years ago, we took the whole entire area, leveled it, and literally built up from the dirt up what we have today on campus here, and basically it became a learning therapy and production space for our students on campus.

>>Wonderful.

And I'm seeing that the students have so many different things to engage.

You mentioned to me earlier about a production part of your garden.

Can you expand on that for me?

>>So everything you see here in our garden beds, the kids have had one opportunity to plant, water, or just just weed around the plants that you see here.

But after we're done getting them to grow up a little bit, we might use this stuff in our various activities, either through our cooking classes or through science classes.

Everything you see here can be used in one way, shape, or form in whatever space we have on our campus for our students.

>>That has to be exciting for the students to see things grown up; they've planted it from seed and then they grew it up and then they get the chance to actually utilize it.

I understand too that you mentioned that you provide these to families that have need?

>>Yeah.

We actually can harvest our spinach, our lettuce, anything that's in here, and send it home with the families with their grocery bag every week.

>>Oh, that's fantastic.

But what other things do the kids can connect with, touch, feel, taste?

>>So as you walk up from the northern side of the garden, you actually walk through a production space.

In those spaces, you have vegetables, you have some fruit trees up that end of it.

When they walk through in the morning, they come out of the buildings, they can actually grab the fruit off the tree; and if we have a pear, they can eat that pear after they wash it off.

And we have like tomatoes, cherry tomatoes up the end of the garden, and some of the students when we have those cherry tomatoes, they'll actually eat multiple tomatoes in one sitting, >>Wonderful!

>>and it's just a really cool experience for them to try something new, try something different.

So we can actually have them do that here on our campus.

>>Cheers.

>>Cheers!

>>What it taste like?

They don't even got no flavor for real.

>>You gotta eat the whole thing.

>>The whole thing?

>>Because the flavor I've found is in the stem and like the bottom.

It's like sweet.

How was it, Iker?

>>Flower.

>>It's good?

(laughs) >>Yeah.

>>One of the big tenets of the Villa is just to meet our clients and our students where they are and we do that in the garden as well.

So varying levels of difficulty in terms of one step, two step, three step directions.

Some of our students are actually hand-over-hand watering.

Do the best thing for the individual student; meeting them where they're at.

>>Good job, buddy.

>>Something as little as picking up a pile of leaves, putting it in a wheelbarrow, and then transferring that to the compost, that is a success for some of our students.

Just having them outside is a success: having them here, listening to the birds, smelling our mint, even just trying a Blackberry, that's a success on a micro level.

And then on a macro level, just creating the space for community and having a good time; that's a success for me, that's what I'm looking for, just that relationship.

>>Last year, you got greenhouses added, and I know that the students get an opportunity to grow most of the things from seed.

Can you please expand on what you guys actually do in your greenhouse?

>>This now allows us to year-round gardening.

So typically, we had to stop gardening when it got cold, when it got rainy, and now we can actually have, we have solar panels that we can utilize on top of those greenhouses that provide power for us to do year-round gardening.

We kind of have a lab space on the one greenhouse where it's really grown to see it's putting together the plants for our spring produce.

And then the other tunnel, we're trying to help teach them the job skills on how to create flower arrangements.

Growing our own flowers behind the greenhouses, bringing the kids inside of that greenhouse and actually creating those bouquets.

We recently had a prom, and at the prom, we actually had all of our own flowers for the bouquets, the boutonnieres, and things like that for the students.

>>That had to be exciting.

Now tell me more about the skills that the kids are translating or learning from the garden.

>>I think the biggest skill is working together as a team.

One of the biggest things we've heard from our community partners, especially in the workforce, is most adults and young employees are having difficulty working together.

So if they're coming together as a team aspect, they're actually working through those issues: conflict resolution on the job, showing up for the job on time.

Those are some of the biggest things that they have to utilize, and then all the other life skills come into play: raking and sweeping, wiping down tables.

They all are a part of life skill building too, and then you add on to those life skills.

Well, if you want to get involved in the garden, now you're planting a seed, you're watering the seed, you're weeding around the seed.

Eventually, you're gonna harvest that seed and maybe cook it in our restaurant environment that we have here on campus.

>>As they do each step, they're actually learning skills that translate to other areas of their life.

>>Absolutely.

>>Wonderful.

>>And it helps us make the connection for the student once they leave us, or once they transition back to public school.

We can work with our community partners to say, "These are all the skills these kids have mastered here on our campus.

Let's help support you in your next phase of your development as a student, or as a young adult.

>>You have a beautiful sensory garden behind us.

The students have such an opportunity to learn so much in this space.

Please share with me what they're learning and how they can connect with nature.

>>The coolest thing about the sensory garden is from the moment you step in the garden, you start to smell the different herbs we have, from the rosemary, we have lemon thyme, we have some curry back there.

The students actually get to experience that touching, feeling, learning that bugs are not bad and is a good thing, learning about pollination and how important it is that we have bees and bugs to do that pollination.

So it really serves as not only just a learning space but a production space, but therapeutically, it gives an oasis away from the other areas of the garden too.

>>So when your kids need to de-stress a little bit or de-escalate maybe some of the emotional stresses that they're undergoing, they have different areas in the garden to escape to.

>>Yeah, and I kind of look at the whole entire campus as an opportunity for not just training but also therapeutic spaces for our students to be able to say, "I need a break for a moment."

And that helps them process those feelings and emotions until they can develop better coping skills to handle that behavior next time.

>>A lot of learning seems to be happening here and as well, the kids get an opportunity to relax, de-stress as we say, and find different ways to just be at peace with their surroundings.

>>It's also a great space for us to have activities for the kids to engage with each other from different services.

For example, on Friday, we're having karaoke underneath our outdoor classroom with the students while we're drinking tea that we've made from our own chamomile from our garden here.

So that allows us to incorporate various techniques into our learning processes for our students.

>>Thank you for sharing your garden here with us at St. Joseph Villa.

>>You're welcome.

Thank you for coming out.

>>First garden, then take a break.

>>First garden, and then we're gonna have lunch.

What a great space.

With many opportunities for learning and engagement for the students there to enjoy.

The developed skills from garden therapy will serve the students well.

Next, Amyrose Foll explains the importance of keeping seedlings in properly sized containers and how to pot them up if you're not ready to plant them in the ground, (upbeat music) >>Today, we are going to be up-potting.

It is a beautiful day out here in Virginia, wonderful weather, and we're gonna spend some time outside.

Gardening is an amazingly healthy way to get time outdoors, and you get the added benefit of having all this beautiful produce.

So today, we're gonna start working with cucumbers, some gourds and some Okinawan okra.

They're a little bit stressed because they've been in these tiny little seed cells for too long.

So the first thing we're actually going to do is kind of assess what is going on with these and trim off the not so healthy looking leaves.

You want to start with a tool that is clean.

You can use something as simple as a little bit of rubbing alcohol, or some hydrogen peroxide, and just wipe it off with a clean towel, because we don't want to transfer diseases directly to these plants while we're trying to take care of them.

So I'm gonna just look at one of these little guys, and very carefully and closely, snip that off, clean them up a little bit nice.

And basically, we're just gonna put this potting soil little bit down in there plop it in In this potting soil, I do have some phosphorus and that'll help the root growth.

And basically, that's all you need to do.

So these guys will probably sit out for another week or two, get a little bit bigger, a little sturdier and healthier, and then they will be transplanted into our garden to enjoy all summer long.

This guy's not too bad.

He's a little bit yellowed, so we will snip him.

These little paper pots are great, because they're biodegradable, but they do dry out pretty quickly compared to the reusable cells.

So I'm just gonna plop this whole thing all the way down in there, give him a little more potting mix, and some of those good nutrients.

And, voila.

These guys, because they have been stressed out in here, they do have some not so great looking leaves.

I am not gonna cut those off though, because we only have a couple leaves on each one of these.

And leaves are the solar panels of the plant.

They provide the energy to the plant to grow.

And overall, they're not too terrible looking.

They'll recover from this damage and have probably pretty great robust growth.

Ant theyll be so much happier in this new potting soil with more room to grow, more room to spread their roots.

So since we're adding more soil, I am going to water these in, and encourage them to spread their little roots.

And I want to encourage you to try this at home.

Growing your own food is a really great, healthy way to get outside, spend time in nature.

And they have the addeded benefit of providing you with good, healthy food for your kitchen, where you control everything that goes into those plants.

Happy gardening!

Gardening should fill you with joy and contentment.

On a beautiful day, even the simplest of garden tasks are a great way to de-stress and enjoy nature.

where you control everything that goes into those plants.

Walking in the woods is another way to enjoy nature.

And I met with restoration ecologist Charles Smith in Spotsylvania to visit an old growth forest and talk about how natural processes heal ecosystems and create health benefits for us.

>>It's just so relaxing to be in these woods.

It just makes me feel so much better.

So tell me about this lovely forest we're standing in.

>>Well, this is a little bit older piece of woods.

I think that's the key, is that the quality of a resource, a natural area, has a lot to do with how long it's been left alone.

The more disturbance, the lower the quality of the resource.

So this one is an older piece of woods.

Definitely the soils are greater than 80 to 100 years or so old, well, since people have done any real disturbing activity.

>>You know, when most people think of a forest, they just think of the trees and the understory plants.

But there's so much more to a forest than that.

>>Yes, it is diversity in not only the types of species, but how they interact with one another, how they're kind of arranged on the landscape.

They layer above ground and they actually layer below ground.

It's that soil profile that's actually one of the most important parts for forest health, or almost any good ecosystem.

You cannot replace a healthy forest soil in a human lifetime.

Not only do plants share the soil profile, they actually feed the soil profile.

They pump their sugars, what are called root exudates, actually feeds the soil, and it feeds all the organisms in return.

They get the benefits of nutrients they couldn't otherwise get from bacteria and fungus.

So it's really this incredible interaction above and below ground.

>>That's amazing.

The two are just symbiotic.

>>And the irony is the smell of good dirt is a geosmin.

It actually comes from bacteria.

>>Oh, really?

>>And so when you smell dirt has that really rich smell, that's just lots of bacteria.

>>Oh, that's cool.

>>Yeah, that's usually in highly organic soil.

>>Mm-hm.

So when I walk into a, I'll say a dense woodland, a healthy woodland area, there is a smell, there's a fragrance to it.

Where does that come from?

>>Well, the plants are releasing compounds, and there are volatile organic compounds.

And there's really good studies have been done in the last 10 years that show the definitive benefits of being in a healthy natural system.

Almost anything outside can be beneficial to you.

It's understood that gardening is very beneficial to you.

But the richer and the healthier the ecosystem, the more it provides those benefits to you.

And they think it's several different things.

One is psychological, that there's the concept of biophilia, that we evolved here and that that is something that we naturally gravitate towards is healthy land systems.

But in addition, they produce chemicals that we're breathing that are actually helping our autoimmune system and they're just overall beneficial for our mental and physical health.

>>How large of an area of forested land is needed to really help benefit not only the ecosystem, but also us as humans?

>>It can be small, and right now, I mean, we're standing in a woods that's on a property that's not very big.

We're near a major road.

There is a materials business close by, so you hear dump trucks during the day.

But the bottom line is because you've got all the habitat pieces, the wildlife's happy here.

So it's functioning.

It's got some buffers that are depleted, but that landscape mosaic is often what you're looking for.

It's different pieces of habitat across the landscape complementing one another, but it doesn't have to be that big.

And I worked in park systems for years and there are postage stamps parks and little community areas that are relatively good quality that can provide a lot of good benefit.

Now of course, the bigger it is, usually the better it is in terms of the overall species diversity and abundance as well as all the ecosystem functions.

But it doesn't have to be that big.

>>My husband and I, we go to the mountains regularly to get our forest fix.

So what other places could we go to to get those benefits that just make us feel so much better?

>>It doesn't just have to be a forest for benefits.

It can be an area near water, which is the reason why people love the beach so much.

It can be meadow areas.

It can be high mountain areas.

It can be deserts.

It just has to have all the components.

It's the less disturbed systems that have the better benefits for us.

We've altered 77% of the habitable Earth.

So it's those few fragments with healthy soil profiles that have the greatest biodiversity, both in what's living under the ground and above the ground.

It's all those pieces working together that, again, produce more compounds and greater benefits for us as well as overall ecosystem benefits.

Healthy systems, you should see leaves.

You shouldn't see green all over the ground, unless maybe you're in a low area with a fern stand.

You know, but other than that, you should not see green everywhere.

You should see layers.

Those layers shouldn't be green in the winter, except unless they're may be something like a mountain laurel.

>>Or a bayberry.

>>Or bayberry, something that's an evergreen.

But the vast majority of vegetation should defoliate in the winter.

And then of course, the other thing, I mentioned deer.

Deer vacuum our forests clean.

>>Oh, gosh yes.

>>So where they're massively overabundant, they lower biodiversity.

And the other thing to remember, I think one of the common denominators people love, butterflies and birds.

Well, butterflies, a significant percentage, spend three stages of their lifecycle in the forest.

They eat tree leaves, then they go into pupal stage in the leaves in the ground, and then they emerge, of course, as an adult.

But only then do they go to your garden or a butterfly, you know, habitat that you see with wildflowers.

Similarly with birds, this time of year, they are feeding their young caterpillars.

And so you have to have a healthy forest in order to have native birds and it's critical because there can be over a million caterpillars eaten in a square mile per day of forest by birds raising their young.

It's amazing.

>>And it's so important, we as a community need to focus on increasing the number of native plants in our landscapes.

>>Yeah, native plant biomass is critical.

It's that ability of insects to eat the native plants.

It's not just providing nectar from a flower.

It's actually eating the plant itself, feeding off the roots, feeding off the stems, feeding off the leaves.

It's those co-evolved relationships between insects.

Non-natives are not problematic in the sense that it's wonderful to have beautiful plants you enjoy.

It's when they are too much of the landscape and/or they're invasive and they start to take over and crowd everything else.

>>Exactly.

>>Yeah, it's that lack of native plant biomass that we're really struggling with right now.

>>And I think people need to realize too, not having perfect plants.

We're allowed to have plants with holes in them.

>>Yes.

>>We're allowed to have plants be eaten.

And I think some people don't realize that even for trees, when it gets to late summer, early autumn, yes, those leaves need to be eaten by the insects so that they can continue with their lifecycles and the tree is done, I'll say done its thing for the tree and it has a natural cycle within itself to be able to preserve and conserve its resources for the winter, knowing that the leaves now are going to be used for insect food so that it's that circle of life, shall we say?

>>Well, the irony is that a healthy forest, when you're walking through it, you don't realize there are millions of caterpillars eating that forest every second of the growing season, but they're not harming it because, again, they co-evolved.

It's that balance, because there's tons of predators eating those insects also.

So again, that interrelationship co-evolved over millions and tens of millions of years is really the key.

>>And I think we can get it back.

It's not going to happen overnight.

But I think if we can start changing our thinking and think and understand the relationship of our landscapes to our natural forests, then I think we can do it.

>>I've worked a lot with Audubon Society, and they're really big on promoting backyard habitat and certified landscapes.

And one of the things I think that's really good is say to people just plant a mailbox garden, 10 by 10, 5 by 8.

>>Start somewhere.

>>Whatever it is, just start.

Get some native plants in there.

Get some funky ones in there.

Oh, the other thing, of course, is multiple lifecycle stages.

So you've got most of our bees, 70% of our bees nest in the ground.

They've got to have leaf litter.

They've got to have woody debris.

They don't go into a place that you would assume is like where they go.

They actually nest in the ground.

So having that just good soil profile is critical for the most important pollinator, which is bees.

>>Yes, and not our European honeybee, but our native bees.

>>Yeah, our 4,000 species of native bees, wasps, and others.

>>Here in the United States.

Yes, yes.

>>Yeah.

>>We all can play a part in reconnecting things.

And I really thank you for explaining it to us.

>>Absolutely, I really appreciate it because I know that it takes a lot of us to make a difference.

Although, each one of us can do something, and of course, we get direct benefits from all that we do individually and collectively.

>>Absolutely.

A walk in the woods will never be the same for me.

It is fascinating to learn more about these connections in nature.

Next, Serome Hamlin shares tips for using a flower you may grow in your garden in ways that appeal to our senses beyond sight.

(upbeat music) (water gurgles) >>The magic of a garden is one that can stimulate all of the senses.

Just imagine the smell of a magnolia on a warm spring evening, hearing the birds or the sound of water in your garden as you're working in your beds and the taste of a fresh summer tomato.

And of course, everyone enjoys that.

Today I'm going to be talking about lavender and preserving that for the smell and the taste.

All you need to do is get a bundle of lavender, which I have already done.

Try to get it first thing in the morning when everything is just nice and fresh.

Bundle it up into a small bundle.

Give this a quick tie.

Takes about two weeks.

Hang it upside down, preferably in a dark place.

That way the sun or other light won't bleach the color and it will hold its color much better.

Now another thing that you can do, and I love doing, especially in the summer, 'cause everybody love their lemonade, but making a lavender lemonade is very easy and all you have to do is make a simple lavender syrup.

So I have two cups of sugar here.

You take your lavender And we're going to just pull off the blooms directly into the sugar.

(lavender ripping) If only you could smell this right now.

I think that's going to be enough.

And what you want to do is just really get in there and mash the lavender up into the sugar.

Okay, next step, water.

And since I used two cups of sugar, I'm going to use four cups of boiling water to dissolve the sugar and take up all of the essence of the lavender.

(spoon rattling) You want to keep stirring until all of the sugar is dissolved.

And then what you want to do is just let the lavender and sugar mixture set for at least a half hour up to maybe a few hours just to give that lavender time to infuse into the sugar mixture.

I have some right here that's already made.

I've already pre-made the lemonade, (lemonade gurgling) that in, and then just give that a swirl.

So I hope everyone would give this a try and I hope that everyone would get out there and feel the magic of your garden and enjoy the season.

(Serome sipping) I wish I could share this with you.

Engaging your senses in the garden, walking in the woods and tending plants are all great ways to connect with nature, ease stress, benefit our health and make us happier.

We hope you will think about your connection to the natural world and make time to enjoy the healing benefits of being outdoors.

Nature is restorative.

See you soon.

And till then, remember gardening is for everyone.

We are all growing and learning together.

>>Production funding for "Virginia Home Grown" is made possible by- (birds chirping) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright tone)