One little girl found her voice in a garden. More than 150,000 children have now walked through hers.

For Donna Solomon, the garden was never just a garden.

It was healing. It was wonder. It was a place where life could be touched, tasted, and truly experienced.

Donna stopped speaking when she was two years old.

In 1966, when she was nine, she had no friends and spoke to no one. Every day, she rode her bicycle past the only nursery on Main Street in Barstow, wondering what was inside.

One day, she finally went in.

The owner noticed Donna didn’t speak, but invited her to help anyway.

From 1966 to 1970, Donna worked at the nursery from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The owner spoke to her every day and encouraged her:

“Say what you want to the bees and flowers first—then say it to someone else.”

Little by little, the garden helped Donna find her voice.

The garden became part of her life’s work

From 1984 to 2001, Donna worked in law enforcement as an advocate for women and children experiencing trauma.

She began inviting them into her own garden, where planting, touching the soil, and caring for living things helped them settle and feel safe enough to open up.

Donna saw again what she had experienced as a child:

Sometimes people need to feel safe before they can find the words.

Later, while teaching others about plants and gardening, teachers repeatedly asked Donna:

“Could you create something like this for children?”

The idea stayed with her.

The question that became GardenWorks

After retiring from law enforcement and raising young children of her own, Donna began noticing something missing.

She took her children hiking and brought them to botanical gardens. They loved nature. They were curious. They wanted to touch, run, dig, taste, and explore.

But too often, the message was:

Don’t touch.
Don’t run.
Don’t get dirty.
Don’t make a mess.

So Donna took them outside instead—into places where they could move freely, investigate what interested them, and experience nature with their whole bodies.

And she kept returning to one question:

How are children supposed to learn from nature if they’re never allowed to fully experience it?

That question became the seed for GardenWorks for Kids.

From 400 square feet to thousands of children

In 2010, Donna opened GardenWorks in a tiny, 400-square-foot space behind Carolyn’s Chocolates, welcoming just 20 children at a time.

Then one teacher told another.

And another teacher told another.

With a dream, years of sweat equity, and support from the local community, the city, volunteers, and generous businesses, the garden continued to grow.

In 2016, GardenWorks moved into the Yucaipa garden families know today.

A place where children learn by doing

Today, GardenWorks for Kids is a nonprofit children’s learning garden where families, schools, teachers, homeschool groups, and community organizations come to experience nature up close.

Here, children can dig, plant, taste, explore, create, imagine, and get wonderfully dirty.

Instead of only reading about seeds, they plant them.

Instead of only learning about pollinators, they search for bees and butterflies.

Instead of being told where food comes from, they see it growing from the earth.

Through hands-on education, children build curiosity, confidence, healthy habits, joy, and a deeper connection to the natural world.

More than 150,000 children have now experienced Donna’s garden through field trips, camps, family events, celebrations, and educational programs.

Because childhood should include dirt under the fingernails, wonder in the eyes, and the freedom to learn by doing.

For Donna, the garden was where she found her voice.

GardenWorks for Kids exists so that every child has a place to discover their own.