Research reveals gardening has a positive effect on our mental health.
(Photo: ~Courtesy of Laura DePrado)

Research reveals gardening has a positive effect on our mental health. Gardening, planting and planting activities keeps us connected to other living things, allows us to be nurturers, and a sense of responsibility.

Being with plants and flowers allows us to relax, reduces stress, increases physical activity, and allows us to be in the moment, focusing on the present, and connects us to the seasonal cycles and rhythms of nature. (more…)

Anew Wellness, Jerome Mitchell, CEO, Candice Deglon, Managing Director, and Vernon Gholston, Executive Vice President, connecting with plants in a Horticultural Therapy activity facilitated by Laura DePrado of Final Touch Plantscaping, LLC., in preparation for March 10th in-house workshop. (Photo: ~Courtesy of Laura DePrado)

Anew Wellness in Somerset aims to create a path to wellness for individuals and families experiencing mental and behavioral challenges for adults and adolescents.

Vernon Gholston is starting Anew. The former Ohio State football phenom was selected by the New York Jets with the sixth overall pick in the 2008 National Football League Draft.

Today, following four years in the NFL, the former defensive end/linebacker who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, excelled as a student athlete, ran countless yards and took and gave hit after hit, is pursuing a passion to destigmatize mental health, change the industry standards and better the lives of people dealing with mental health issues. (more…)

The winter garden is here. All that it holds is alive and dynamic. It’s full of wonder, inspiration, possibilities, promise and hope about the garden and spring to come.
(Photo: ~Courtesy of Laura DePrado)

It’s January 2017. Happy New Year from my mobile office (the kitchen table), which looks out to the backyard and gardens I am watching the first snowfall and distracted and exhilarated by the view.

Large snowflakes are falling in every direction and landing perfectly blanketing everything in their path to create a white, puffy covering. Brilliant red, northern cardinals, and their mates and countless doves, robins, sparrows, nuthatches, feed on homemade suets in the garden. The red-bellied woodpecker pecks away at the bark of the plum tree while a northern cardinal sings and waits his turn at the bird feeder. Large sunflower seed shells fall from feeders as birds split them open and toss them to the ground. (more…)

The colors of fall are a cornucopia of plant textures, sizes, shapes and fragrances that tantalize the senses and create a market place of consumers eager to buy at retail garden centers and greenhouses.

Fall sales of ornamentals of mums, pansies and flowering cabbage, has increased in the last 10 years to the point where home decorating in the fall is rivaling sales for Christmas decorating. This in turn has helped the bottom line of growers throughout the state. Plants add benefit to the environment, economy and health and wellness. (more…)

New Jersey Sen. Tom Kean, New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney, Laura DePrado of Final Touch Plantscaping LLC, New Jersey Sen. Christopher (Kip) Bateman and Michael DePrado. Photo courtesy of the New Jersey Senate.

March 21, 2016

Just in time for spring, the state of New Jersey has designated the week of March 20-26 as Horticultural Therapy Week, inaugurated in ceremonial Senate resolution on Monday March 14.

New Jersey is the first state in the nation to formally designate that week, initially established by Congress in 2006, to celebrate the endless benefits of connecting people and plants in vocational, social and therapeutic programs in a peaceful non-threatening environment using horticulture modality to improve the quality of life, according to a March 15 press release from Final Touch Plantscaping LLC. (more…)