First Place: Horticulture Therapy for Pediatric Patients at Virginia Treatment Center for Children (VTCC) Richmond
Submitted by Three Chopt Garden Club
The Three Chopt Garden Club helped create and continues to maintain two gardens at VTCC. Membership seeks to partner with experts to create a horticulture therapy program. This would become one of the few acute, child psychiatric gardening programs in the commonwealth. Horticultural therapy would give patients access to something they crave: the outside world. Programming will serve as an anchor for children and ai in efforts to stabilize their mental health. In addition to improving patient outcomes, the program would also directly benefit frontline providers and patient families. Funds provided through the Common Wealth Award will underwrite the purchase of equipment to launch and sustain this program, pay for first-year plant costs and support GCV’s mission to challenge future generations to celebrate the beauty of the land and understand the gifts of nature.
Second Place: Beautification & Conservation of Eastern Shore Coalition Against Domestic Violence Campus Onancock
Submitted by The Garden Club of the Eastern Shore
For more than a decade, Eastern Shore Coalition Against Domestic Violence has sheltered clients and operated from inadequate facilities. Thanks to a recent donation, ESCADV purchased a former assisted living facility in Onancock, Virginia to be repurposed as the Shore’s domestic violence shelter. The Garden Club of the Eastern Shore is partnering with three other Eastern Shore garden clubs as well as the Eastern Shore Master Gardeners to support this project by organizing and providing landscaping and a children’s play area. Our plan will transform this blighted property, improve its neighborhood, and will include trees, low-maintenance plantings and a kitchen garden bed, an irrigation well, supplies and tools to ensure this project’s success. Our goal is to enhance ESCADV’s massive effort by providing a welcoming and attractive “soft landing” for families in crisis.
