Nonprofit connects veterans with the healing power of gardening

When Navy veteran Salome Jeronimo moved to Philly in 2020, the pandemic was raging. During their first two years here, they didn’t get to explore much of what the city had to offer.

That changed in the summer of 2022, when Jeronimo signed up for a 10-week plant-care course at the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in University City. The workshop was organized by Heroic Gardens, an Elkins Park-based nonprofit with a mission to “introduce and surround veterans with horticulture as a form of personal healing.”

That class turned out to be so much more than a chance to learn about plants and gardening. It lit Jeronimo’s path toward finding community.

“I’m a Black, queer woman, and in the service, I dealt with a lot of racism, sexism and transphobia — I was with people where I didn’t always feel safe,” they said. “For a long time I was not proud of calling myself a veteran … [but] after taking this workshop and meeting the other vets there, that feeling started to change. I met people who I now consider part of my created family.”

Through that class, Jeronimo also met Collie Turner, the founder and executive director of Heroic Gardens. Turner urged Jeronimo to sign up for a yard transformation, another service Heroic Gardens offers, where volunteers clean up and beautify — with plants — veterans’ outdoor spaces.

In October 2023, when Jeronimo’s yard cleanup was scheduled, they decided to widen the scope of the project.

“I said to Collie, ‘I have a lot of low-income and elderly neighbors — if there are a dozen sailors coming here, can we make it a block cleanup?’” Jeronimo remembers.

Turner agreed, and Jeronimo organized their neighbors, secured food donations and contacted the press. On the day of the cleanup, CBS Philadelphia covered the story; the neighbors were thrilled with the positive attention and the cleanup crew’s efforts. The experience was so emboldening for Jeronimo that they started their own nonprofit, the Sisters Affirming Sisterhood Project, which provides free clothing to trans women. Turner advised and motivated them every step of the way.

“It’s so meaningful to have someone in your life believe in you, someone who’s also had to take a leap of faith,” Jeronimo says. “Everyone who enlists takes a leap of faith — it’s a gigantic step — but for a lot of us, it’s the last time we do something like that, because we get hurt, inside and out.”

Taking Root
When Turner founded Heroic Gardens in 2018, it was indeed a leap of faith. After a long career in advertising, she was looking for a new focus and a way to give back. The inspiration came from her close relationship with her grandfather, a World War II veteran, with whom she had spent a lot of time working in his vegetable garden.

“My grandfather was out in his community and his church, trying to help whoever he could — veterans are always looking for ways to serve,” she says. “I thought, ‘What is my next act, and how can I serve?’”

She knew that, in some capacity, she wanted to offer landscaping services to veterans. She had no nonprofit experience and started attending networking events and applying for every grant she could find. At first, however, no one would give her the time of day.

“In year one, not one person returned my phone calls, and that had everything to do with the fact that the veteran community is tight-knit and I’m a civilian,” she says.

Heroic Gardens got its first win in 2019, when Philadelphia Veterans Comfort House in West Philly invited Turner and some volunteers to do a significant land transformation, clearing out swaths of bamboo, planting trees and building raised beds in its backyard. The women in the shelter would sit on the porch and chat with the Heroic Gardens crew, requesting specific herbs that they wanted to use in their cooking.

Soon after, Turner began researching horticultural therapy and enrolled in Temple University’s Horticultural Therapy program. Her education confirmed what she’d always intuitively sensed: gardening helps you feel better.

A growing body of scientific research has found that gardening can reduce stress, fatigue, depression and pain while boosting cognition, bone strength and immune function and bringing other physical and emotional benefits. Studies conducted by VA Medical Centers show that participants in horticultural therapy programs report reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity, particularly in terms of depression, anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

Jeronimo draws a direct connection between putting their hands in the soil and their PTSD recovery.

“With PTSD, you create a life where everything is set in stone because losing control feels like a personal failure,” they say. “Gardening showed me that some things are outside of your control, and those lessons have translated outside of gardening. I give myself a little more grace.”

Flowering
Now, more than five years in, Heroic Gardens has served more than 1,300 veterans, powered by 25,000 volunteer hours and more than 100 supporters, including individuals, foundations and corporations.

It offers three main services: land/yard transformations in the Greater Philadelphia area; horticultural therapy classes for veterans and their caregivers; and virtual workshops, where veterans meet online monthly to work on gardening projects that are mailed to them.

The impact of the work has wide-reaching ripple effects, which Turner has observed over time.

There’s an element of what we do that’s life-changing.”

— Collie Turner, founder, Heroic Gardens

“[The veterans] learn about self-care and worth, and the domino effect is that they lose 20 pounds, get a haircut, get a job … I’m not saying we’re directly responsible for that, but there’s an element of what we do that’s life-changing,” she says.

Jeronimo adds that, in their case, Heroic Gardens also created new connections with their neighbors.

“That cleanup really brought us together as a block. A home across the street just got torn down, and my neighbors and I are planning to take it over and start a little vegetable garden,” they report.

The newest Heroic Gardens project is a veteran-run sunflower farm in Pennypack Park, slated to open in July. Located at the intersection of Torresdale Avenue and Megargee Street in Holmesburg, Northeast Philly, the farm will be a healing space that will also include raised beds growing vegetables and herbs for the neighbors. Its main function, however, will be veteran workforce development.

“We meet so many veterans who say, ‘I’d love to do [gardening] for a living, but there are no jobs,’” Turner says. “We said, ‘Ok, let’s make some jobs.’”