Diana Chiappa and the Garden Club of Bermuda just wrote a check for $48,500—and Bermuda's environmental and mental health landscape is already greener for it. In the 2025-2026 financial year, the club distributed its generosity across six organizations that share a fundamental belief: that nature heals, teaches, and transforms communities. The Bermuda National Trust, Focus Counselling Services, Warwick Academy, BEST, BioQuest, and Waterstart are now equipped to deepen their work in conservation, education, and wellbeing.
What makes this gift remarkable isn't just the dollar amount—it's how deliberately it was directed. Each organization embodies a truth that the Garden Club has built its identity around: that nature-based activities aren't luxuries, but essential tools for human flourishing. The club's annual giving reflects this philosophy, year after year identifying partners whose work weaves environmental stewardship into the fabric of community life.
At the Bermuda National Trust, Myles Darrell leads the weekly Youth Eco Club, where schoolchildren get their hands dirty learning about native and endemic plants. Students explore propagation techniques and seed germination, connecting Bermuda's botanical heritage to their own generation's future. Meanwhile, Focus Counselling Services has launched Root and Rise, a healing earth project that turns gardening into rehabilitation. Residents work the soil not just to grow food, but to grow themselves—gaining life skills that lead to employment, entrepreneurship, and dignity. It's conservation as healing.
Warwick Academy recently opened its Seed Library, where students and staff borrow and exchange seeds like any other resource. Local sustainable gardening expert Chris Faria from the AgraLiving Institute led a six-hour training program to get the initiative rooted. The message is clear: sustainable living isn't an elite hobby—it's something schools can teach, normalize, and pass down through generations.
BEST is working within the Bermuda Plan 2018 to balance development and conservation, protecting critical land zones while acknowledging the pressures of growth. It's the unglamorous but essential work of preservation. Then there's BioQuest, where a young all-Bermudian team led by Dr. Carika Weldon and JP Rouja is mapping the genome of the Bermuda cedar tree. This effort to produce the first high-quality reference genome of the island's national tree promises to transform conservation efforts for a species with deep cultural roots—historically used for shipbuilding and furniture—and deep ecological significance.
Waterstart, now in its 25th year of operation, serves approximately 650 students annually, with 55 percent receiving financial aid. The organization has recently expanded to include an organic garden, extending its focus beyond water recreation into food security and reforestation. These six organizations share a common thread: they understand that Bermuda's future depends on people who know how to steward the island's natural resources with care.
The Garden Club's $48,500 is a vote of confidence in this vision—and a reminder that environmental stewardship and human wellbeing aren't separate goals. They flourish together, in gardens and classrooms, in healing spaces and conservation efforts, across the island.