The Hope Gardens, originally named the Robins Air Force Base Camellia Memorial Gardens, was started in 1975 by the Camellia Society as a memorial to Base employees who died during the year.  As time went on, the interest in maintaining the 2.5-acre gardens waned and only the monument area was kept up. By 2016, it was decided to move the memorial off Base for security reasons and the gardens were abandoned.  In 2019 the Houston County Extension Master Gardeners decided to revive the gardens. A handful of volunteers started to clean up the gardens. It was a slow, lonely, and hot process. The big turnaround came when the gardens finally got noticed by the leadership of the Base. It was decided that the gardens would be a great addition to the Integrated Resiliency and Prevention Office (IR&P). The IR&P was developing the Hope Initiative to combat the extremely high—the highest in the entire Armed Service—suicide rate at Robins AFB. Since then, suicide rates have dropped. It was also during this time that the Camellia Memorial Gardens was renamed Hope Gardens.

Hope Gardens has a unique Therapeutic Horticultural(TH)mission. For active-duty military members, joining a mental health program still has a stigma that can end careers.  The IR&P Office is trying to change this thinking but it is a slow process. So how does Hope Garden try to engage our airmen?

We offer at least three-monthly events at Hope Gardens. “Conversations in Hope” is a monthly FB live broadcast from the gardens.  We focus on issues pertaining to the Airmen and their families and we always invite our listeners to the gardens. We offer programs for the military child every month and we offer special programs for the Airmen in the dorms. We make our biggest impact when we have different base organizations send Airmen to the gardens for routine clean-up days.  This is not the traditional TH way of doing business, but it works. This is how.

The Airmen come to the gardens to get volunteer hours which go into their promotion package.  We do our safety briefing and send them out.  The Master Gardeners work with them on the gardening tasks, but we also spend time just engaging them in conversation.  Once the two-hour work shift is complete, we usually have two or three who stay behind. It is usually these individuals who need help.  They are usually young Airmen who are lonely and need someone to just listen to their stories. Every once in a while, we get individuals who have serious issues.  We are able to get them to go into confidential counseling through the RO. Almost all of those that we have referred return to volunteer or let us know how they are doing.

Volunteers are always needed for our events and special projects. We also meet on Thursdays at 9 am to do routine maintenance and to brainstorm ideas. Contact Donna at huntdonna26@gmail.com or 478.747.3120