Rewild your sense of wonder for the more-than-human world, and rediscover how Mother Nature provides sacred guidance through life's circular and seasonal journey. Friends of the Forest’s offerings are a response to our longing to deeply reconnect with the Sacred and more-than-human world. We welcome you to connect with nature, live with the seasons, tune into your body’s needs, and explore a little earth magick with us.
We provide engaging, sensory immersion experiences in nature to help people cultivate a healing reconnection with our natural world.
The work we do and the experiences we provide help people feel happier, healthier, and more connected to Mother Earth.
Explore Our Offerings
Our Mission
We help people remember why our more-than-human world matters.
We believe that when we recover our relationship with the land when our soul is nurtured by it, we find our belonging. When this deep sense of belonging and reconnection is awakened, we can begin healing our planet and become whole once again.
Healing our living Earth.
Healing ourselves.
Our approach is simple.
We provide engaging, sensory immersion experiences in nature to help people cultivate a healing reconnection with our natural world.
By enabling people to reconnect with our living Earth and experience her beauty, a sense of belongingness emerges, making life more meaningful.
The Nature Nurtures Project
Bringing Nature Into Nursing Homes
Older adults living permanently in nursing homes have limited opportunities to connect with the natural world. Yet, research suggests that the connection with nature is fundamental to health, well-being, and the human spirit. Most residents in assisted living facilities are dependent on others to experience nature. They often require help to go outside, and they may not be offered activities that reconnect them with nature. Nursing homes are considered home to many, yet in these homes, many individuals are disconnected from the natural world. Friends of the Forest is working to address this disconnection with the natural world experienced by long-term care residents by helping develop and implement nature-based activities in long-term care communities.
Through our Nature Nurtures Project, we aim to reconnect residents with nature so they may experience joy, curiosity, and aliveness
that might have been forgotten or not acknowledged for a long time.
We offer four programs through our Nature Nurtures Project to nursing homes: Bird Tales, Feeders for Friends, Sensory Stories, and Happiness Gardens.
We are currently working with Apple Rehab at Chesterfields in Chester, Ct, and we are setting up a program with Apple Rehab in Guilford, Ct.
These programs are funded 100% by donations and ticket sales.
While many of us can experience, benefit from and care for nature, others face barriers to participating and connecting with it. Seniors residing in long-term care facilities often have limited opportunities to connect with the natural world. Yet, research reveals that the connection with nature is fundamental to health, well-being, and the human spirit.
Many residents in America's care centers never have visitors – not from family, friends, clergy, or anyone from a church.
An essential part of our mission is to bring the outside world into the lives of seniors living in nursing homes and facing isolation—FREE of charge through our Nature Nurtures Project. It’s our way of giving back to the “Greatest Generation.”
Friends the Forest, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) and all donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. CT Public Charity Registration #CHR.0064921-EXEMPT