Author: elisgardenofhealing
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meet our community violence reduction social worker & programming consultant: trel morrison
Eli’s Garden of Healing is thrilled to announce our partnership with Trel Morrison. Trel will be instrumental in helping to establish a science-backed programming strategy aimed at reducing violence in our community. We are excited to work with Trel on this incredibly meaningful work. Trel will help us by researching, analyzing, and giving suggestions to…
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New York Times Magazine tribute
When Dwayne Betts wanted to reach out to the family of Elijah Gomez to write about him for the New York Times Magazine annual feature The Lives They Lived, he started with Eli’s obituary and used that as a resource to try to find a way to contact us. After a few attempts to track…
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about our logo
The mosaic design represents the many different types of violence for which the garden is intended to offer healing. Though we carry different pain in each of our personal stories, together we heal as a community, represented as a heart The color scheme is a nod to Elijah’s long standing nickname with his family, Blue.…
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meet our lead architect: marissa dionne mead
Marissa Dionne Mead has been selected as the Lead Architect to help design and construct Eli’s Garden of Healing. Marissa brings a wealth of passion and expertise to our mission. As the Lead Architect for the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence, she has expertise working on deeply personal…
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donate to eli’s garden of healing
Ambushed, shot, murdered while walking home from school on May 9, 2022, less than one week after his 15th birthday. Together with the combined contributions from private donations, grants, and corporate sponsors, we can bring a beautiful healing garden to Hamden, Connecticut. The goal stated above is our initial private donation goal. We plan to…
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community healing in eli’s garden
Transforming vacant lots into urban greenspace has so many benefits for the neighboring community. “To change the community, we have to change the composition of the soil.” – Rob Finley, South Central LA gardener. Watch this inspiring 10 minute TEDtalk (with over 4.2M views!) to hear more about how Rob has embraced gardening to bring…
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gun violence
Yale doctoral student Kathleen O’Neill determined the number of people presenting at Emergency Departments at Yale New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport and St. Francis hospitals for violence-related trauma increased by 55 percent between Jan. 1, 2018 and Jan.1, 2021 compared with the previous three years, according to her thesis “Improving Care for Survivors of Gun Violence,”…
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just like healing, violence impacts us in many ways
Eli’s Garden of Healing was formed from the cowardly act of violence Elijah Gomez experienced on May 9, 2022 when he was ambushed and gunned down while walking home from high school on the Farmington Canal Trail less than a week after he turned 15 years old. While the garden is in memory of Eli,…
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sensory gardens
There are many aspects of a garden which can excite or calm the senses. Colors and smells are some of the ones we think about right away. One of the benefits of sensory gardens is that they are designed with the purpose of encouraging a visitor to be exposed to a range of experiences which…
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encouraging nature-centric healing for victims of violence
Did you know that spending time in nature is proven to reduce stress and help clear the mind? “In the 19th century, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and recognized as the “Father of American Psychiatry,” was first to document the positive effect working in the garden had on individuals with…