The Downtown Native Plants & Wellness Initiative is working to revitalize Atlanta’s urban center—one blossom at a time. The movement is about more than plants. It aims to develop peer leadership and build community as neighbors work together to revitalize Downtown.
The Downtown Native Plants & Wellness Initiative was selected to present at the first Atlanta Way Day on Sept. 25, where Atlanta Downtown Creative Placemaking Lead Noa Hecht and Kindred Lane Founder Elaine Dinos shared details about the project with an audience of community members from nonprofit, corporate, and government sectors. The program itself is a collaboration between Atlanta Downtown and Kindred Lane, a holistic leadership and well-being company.
The initiative began in 2024 with a group of 16 stakeholders and a dozen peer leaders. This steering committee created a resource guide for community members interested in planting a Georgia native garden of their own. The guide can be found on the initiative’s page on the Atlanta Downtown Art & Activation website, which also includes landing pages for public art and other placemaking initiatives in Downtown.
“We have this vision … of, ‘What if we could create a connected wellness journey through Downtown that links native plant gardens with the pathway through the urban core where people gather … where people are really connecting with nature and experiencing environmental stewardship,’” Dinos explained. “They’re benefiting from being in nature, in community. And wellness and art and community are all intertwined.”
The Downtown Native Plants & Wellness Initiative aims to bring outdoor gathering spaces and a stronger community to Downtown by way of native plants. Native gardens are comparatively easy to grow, requiring “up to 75% less maintenance than conventional landscaping, with no need for irrigation systems or chemicals,” according to Atlanta Downtown. The project hopes that neighborly collaboration to create uplifting green spaces for residents will bring the community together.
“I think that a lot of people kind of get stuck on native plants, and they’re like, ‘Why should native plants even matter?’ But I think it’s important to know that the word ‘wellness’ really incorporates many things,” Hecht explained. “Even though native plants is one route for people to get involved, so much more happens beyond that.”
Hecht has been doing creative placemaking for Atlanta Downtown for the past three years. She cherishes the ability to bring accessible art and wellness to people’s lives, making a difference in their happiness.
“There are obviously so many more challenges, and, you know, art and wellness does not fix all of them,” she said. But Hecht uses creative placemaking to “elevate life experience for people as much as you can.”
She pointed to the community and connection that forms when residents take care of the gardens and the sense of awareness that can spread through a neighborhood when these gardens take shape.
“The domino effect of it is really cool and exciting,” Hecht said. “It creates new perspectives of places and the way one can interact with a space, and hopefully that affects their wellness and the way of being that helps connect with community and nature.”
The Native Plants & Wellness Initiative’s latest project is the Adopt-a-Planter Program, which will create multiple involvement opportunities, from community stewardship to sponsorship. Locally-crafted planters will be curated to include native species and will be installed in November. Volunteer community stewards will maintain each planter. Community members who are interested in stewardship can fill out a survey and be matched with a garden site or planter.
3 planters will be coming to Peachtree Street in mid-November, accompanied by signage and possibly artistic elements, Hecht said.
Despite the abundance of concrete in Downtown, Hecht sees a potential for all sorts of green growth.
“We can look at green spaces in so many different ways. Downtown has so much concrete. It doesn’t have as many green spaces as other places, but there’s so many ways to add planters or vertical green spaces. There’s so much potential, and we’re seeing people get really excited about joining” she said.
“The Stitch,” a park that will physically bridge the divide created in the 1950s by the Downtown Connector, was top of mind at the Native Plants & Wellness Initiative’s peer leader group meeting Oct. 15. Phase one of the construction of “The Stitch” is slated to begin in 2026. Once complete, Downtown will have gained 5.7 acres of green space—green space that, according to the project’s website, will soon be home to an abundance of native flora.
“What the Downtown Native Plants & Wellness Initiative is about is inviting in anyone—organizations and collaborators—who really want to be involved in the strategic direction and have programs that are additive,” Dinos said.
In May 2025, Delta Air Lines sponsored a planting effort at Hardy Ivy Park in collaboration with the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District. Residents of the neighborhood signed up to be community stewards of the garden and expressed that the plantings were transformative of the space. Collaborations with corporate leaders like Delta and local groups alike are valuable to the initiative, Dinos said. Churches in the neighborhood are sharing resources between them to activate more gardens.
“Just like the pollinators will visit one flower in one garden bed and then move to another one—they’re not subject to the traffic patterns of Atlanta like we are,” Dinos said. “And a lot of what we’re doing is bringing that same kind of spirit of collaboration from one garden to the next and really collaborating.”
AW2.0 Note to readers: During Atlanta Way Day, 9/25/25, we featured four community collaborations working to improve our city. These powerful initiatives were chosen from a diverse group of submissions that embody the Atlanta Way spirit—innovative problem-solving, cross-sector collaboration, and bridge-building for the good of our community. This year’s presenters are showing what’s possible when creativity meets connection. Discover these projects on our website, meet the people behind them, and find ways to get involved in building a stronger, more connected Atlanta.
