Immersive Garden Walk with Melissa Henderson

Join Nature Therapy Guide Melissa Henderson on an immersive garden stroll and experience the garden in a new way! Your guide will present various invitations designed to engage all the senses and help you take in the nature around you. From start to finish, you will be accompanied and supported on a journey to encounter the more-than-human-world. The walk will conclude in the garden gazebo with tea, light refreshments, and time to reflect on your interactions with nature and all you’ve discovered. 

Participants should wear:

• weather appropriate clothing
• comfortable, closed-toe shoes
• bug spray
• sunscreen

About the Instructor

Melissa Henderson is a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and owner of The Path Before Me: Nature Therapy. She finished her guide training to be certified in 2022 with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. She has lived in Ormond Beach since 2014 with her husband and four boys. Being in nature is one of Melissa’s favorite things along with reading, eating Mexican and Indian food, playing games with her family and friends, and a great fire pit.

“Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. Forest Therapy is inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, which translates to “forest bathing.” Studies have demonstrated a wide array of health benefits, especially in the cardiovascular and immune systems, and for stabilizing and improving mood and cognition. We build on those benefits and look beyond, to what happens when people remember that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and are related to all other beings in fundamental ways.” — Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (natureandforesttherapy.earth)