The Gardens at New Hope

Garden Map

Stop 1: Early Learning Center + Pollinator Gardens

The gardens surrounding the Early Learning Center were designed to be cheerful, calming, and restorative spaces for children, families, staff, and visitors. More than 1,600 perennial plants and 3,000 bulbs create season-long color and habitat for pollinators.

These naturalistic gardens combine native plants, native cultivars, and pollinator-friendly perennials chosen for beauty, resilience, biodiversity, deer resistance, and low-maintenance care. Plants were intentionally selected to provide season-long blooms, contrasting textures and forms, and habitat for pollinators and native wildlife.

The gardens were designed to support New Hope’s mission by creating an environment that feels uplifting, welcoming, and dignified for families rebuilding stability after homelessness.

At the center of the campus is New Hope Early Learning Center, where children ages birth to five receive high-quality early education during one of the most important periods of development. Reliable childcare also allows parents to work, pursue education, and secure stable housing.

Stop 2: Family Shelter + West Side Garden

New Hope Family Shelter is our community’s only emergency shelter specifically designed for families with children. Families stay in private family units while working toward stable housing with support from New Hope staff.

The surrounding gardens were created to offer peaceful outdoor spaces where families can rest, children can play, and parents can experience moments of calm and normalcy during times of crisis.

The naturalistic plantings emphasize biodiversity, seasonal beauty, and habitat for pollinators while requiring modest long-term maintenance through volunteer stewardship.

Stop 3: Ladybug Garden + Gazebo

The Ladybug Garden is an outdoor classroom designed especially for children in New Hope Early Learning Center.

New Hope’s campus includes five raised bed gardens, each 3’ x 8’, where children participate in New Hope’s “Plot to Tot” curriculum by helping plant, tend, harvest, and explore fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Research shows that repeated early exposure to healthy foods helps children build lifelong positive relationships with nutrition.

The garden was intentionally designed to engage children’s senses and imagination through color, texture, smell, and play. Raised beds, climbing vines, whimsical structures, sunflower forts, child-sized seating, birdhouses, and a colorful mural all encourage exploration and joyful learning.

Volunteers also transformed the site’s dense clay soil with mulch and soil improvements to create productive growing space for children’s gardening experiences. Climbing structures, enclosed fencing, and playful garden elements were intentionally designed to create a safe and engaging environment for exploration.

Overlooking the garden, the gazebo serves as a welcoming gathering place for families, staff, volunteers, and visitors throughout the year—a space designed for connection, reflection, and community.

Stops 4 & 5: Detention Basin + South & East Gardens

Originally required for stormwater management, the large detention basin is being transformed by volunteers into a naturalized wildflower landscape that bridges the Early Learning Center and the Ladybug Garden. The project expands pollinator habitat while supporting our vision of spaces that promote healing and hope. Volunteers have sown more than one million seeds as part of the effort.

The south and east gardens continue New Hope’s vision of creating a campus that supports healing, beauty, biodiversity, and belonging. Like the rest of the campus, these gardens were designed in a naturalistic style that emphasizes seasonal evolution, pollinator habitat, ecological health, and low-maintenance sustainability.

The Gardens at New Hope continue to grow and evolve each season, much like the families and children who find stability and hope here.

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