For Erika DiPasquale, building a global network of nature-based health professionals means more than creating another online platform. It means making sure practitioners never have to do this work alone. As Director of the Hub Seedlings Global Network, Erika works behind the scenes to coordinate the volunteers who run regional Seedlings groups, keep members informed, and make sure practitioners around the world can connect with one another.
Her work is highly practical: checking in with Seedlings leaders, organizing calls, tracking participation, preparing newsletters, and making sure people know when and how to join. But what emerges is something much bigger than administration. The network has become a place where practitioners exchange experience, solve problems together, and connect everyday practice with the science behind nature-based interventions.
“We are a professional network of peers in this industry, in this field that are here to support one another,” she says. That peer-to-peer principle sits at the heart of Hub Seedlings. The network is designed to bring together people at different stages of their journeys, from students and newly trained guides to experienced practitioners, and from various cultural and professional contexts. The official Hub Seedlings Global Network is open to nature-based professionals beyond FTHub-trained practitioners as well.
A Global Network with Local Challenges
Erika is based in New Jersey and is particularly connected with the North American Hub Seedlings network. One thing she has noticed is how similar practitioners’ challenges can be, no matter where they are based. “Even though we’re all in different environments, all in different countries with different rules and different laws,” she says, “practitioners often encounter remarkably similar challenges, who comes to their forest baths, how they should communicate what they do, and how they should market their services.”
That shared experience is one of the network’s greatest strengths. People can compare what worked, what didn’t, and how they’ve adapted their practice to their own settings. “For folks who are in places where Forest Bathing is more common knowledge, those in the places where it’s not can learn a lot,” Erika explains. In other words, the network allows practitioners to become pioneers wherever they happen to be.
The structure reflects that philosophy. Hub Seedlings currently connects practitioners through regional networks, with volunteer Seedlings Leaders organizing regular calls and building local connections. The broader network also provides forums, networking, mentorship, and professional development through its Pro membership.
Hub Seedlings Pro: From Peer Support to Building a Practice
There is an important distinction between Hub Seedlings Free, led by the Seedling Leaders, and Hub Seedlings Pro where FTHub deploys all its capabilities to strengthen the professional network beyond the community. The free tier is fundamentally about connection and peer support, while Hub Seedlings Pro adds a professional-development layer, bringing together business education, tools, mentorship, research access, and other resources.
One of Erika’s favorite elements is the collection of eight practice-building courses. Certification teaches practitioners how to guide Forest Bathing or deliver Forest Therapy, but, as she points out, it does not necessarily teach them where to go from there. “You’re learning how to be a Forest Bathing Guide, or how to be a Forest Therapy Practitioner, but you’re not learning how to market yourself or how to build your business.” The courses included in the Hub Seedlings Pro plan are intended to fill that gap, covering areas such as positioning, pricing, digital presence, group programs, working with organizations, social prescribing, financial essentials, and scaling a practice. For practitioners who are passionate about nature but unsure how to turn that passion into sustainable professional work, Erika sees this as a particularly important piece of the ecosystem. “People love nature, and they want to do this work, but they don’t know how to reach people. This is where Hub Seedlings Pro comes in.”
Beyond the courses, Hub Seedlings Pro also gives members access to recordings from FTHub events, monthly mentorship with FTHub trainers, and lectures featuring people working in research and nature-connectedness. That combination matters: practical business skills alongside continued learning and contact with experts.
That connection becomes even clearer when the conversation turns to research. The Forest Therapy Institute Lab is the research and applied-science division of FTHub. Its work includes applied research into Forest Bathing, Forest Therapy, nature-based interventions, nature-based social prescribing, and therapeutic landscape assessment. It also works on international and EU-funded projects, institutional consultancy, and science dissemination. The relationship with Hub Seedlings is deliberately two-way. Pro Annual members receive priority consideration for FTI Lab research projects and fieldwork, early access to findings, and quarterly research briefings. Practitioners can also contribute field data, observations, and practice insights as part of the Lab’s participatory research model.
That means research does not simply travel from a laboratory to practitioners. Practitioners can become part of the process. Erika stressed the point that the relationship between research and everyday guiding is not abstract. Her own training with FTHub gave her a scientific foundation that she now carries into her work as a forest bathing guide. “To me, you can’t separate the two,” she says. “Science is everything.”
She sees research as the foundation that allows practitioners to adapt creatively without losing sight of what makes an intervention effective. “It provides this foundation of knowledge that allows you to be creative,” she explains, “and to apply that knowledge to any audience that you’re working with, to any environment that you’re working in.”
Of course, practitioners can encounter moments of uncertainty, especially when they’re new to the practice, and wonder whether they’re doing the right thing. Within the Hub Seedlings network, Erika says, people frequently remind one another of the evidence behind the practices they use. The result is not just intellectual reassurance, but professional confidence. “If you remove the science, then everything’s a guessing game,” she says. The FTI Lab’s role in the wider FTHub ecosystem is designed precisely around closing that gap between evidence and application. Research findings can feed into training and professional education, while practitioners can contribute observations and data from the field.
A Network of People Growing in Different Places, but Growing Together
Erika is quick to point out that scientific evidence is only part of what practitioners learn from one another. The other part is experience. She herself has been guiding for years and has accumulated stories from working with different people and in very different environments, from forests and beaches to urban parks and indoor settings. Those stories become a kind of insider knowledge that can be passed from one practitioner to another.
“You have your network in the back of your mind, reminding you when you’re guiding,” she says. “I’m not the first guide to experience this.” One story particularly stayed with her. A guide in the Hub Seedlings network once encountered someone in the forest who needed medical attention. Hearing how the other guide handled it gave her something valuable: a mental blueprint for what she might do if faced with a similar situation.
The story illustrates something fundamental about peer networks. Sometimes professional knowledge is not found in a textbook or research paper. Sometimes it is found in the experience of someone who has been there. It is at this point that Erika’s enthusiasm becomes unmistakable. Asked about the wider potential of the practice, she does not hesitate. “Forest Bathing can change the world,” she says. “It really can.” Her reasoning goes beyond the immediate benefits of spending time in nature. She sees nature as something that can influence how people relate not only to the environment, but to one another.
“If everyone felt as good as they feel after connecting with nature all the time,” she says, “just how much better a place the world can be.” This way, the connection is the common thread. Connection with nature can sit alongside social connection, and both can influence how people move through everyday life.
She gives a simple example: after experiencing connection and well-being in a group Forest Bathing setting, perhaps it becomes easier to help someone who needs assistance, or simply to slow down and let another driver merge into traffic. It may sound like a small thing. But Erika’s larger point is that repeated experiences of connection can shape how people behave.
And that makes the Hub Seedlings network itself feel like an extension of the practice it supports. A network that keeps growing. The Hub Seedlings Global Network brings together the scientific, professional, and human dimensions of nature-based health: practitioners supporting practitioners, professional development helping people build sustainable practices, and research providing an evidence base for the work. The network is designed as part of a wider FTHub ecosystem in which education, research, and practice continually feed into one another.
For Erika, however, its most valuable quality may still be its simplest. People know they are not alone. The problems may be different in detail, the forests may look different, and the languages and regulations may change from country to country. Yet practitioners can recognize themselves in each other’s experiences. As she puts it, “We can be pioneers, no matter where we are in the world, and we can spread this amazing practice and experiences everywhere we are.”
Join the Hub Seedlings Global Network, a worldwide professional network where Forest Bathing Guides, Forest Therapy Practitioners, and nature-based health professionals can grow their practice, find their peers, access professional tools, and stay connected to the research and education that define the field.
Join our WhatsApp Community for free for Seedlings announcements and to stay connected with their peers in the nature connection field across the world.
FAQ
What is the Hub Seedlings Global Network?
It’s FTHub’s professional network for nature-based health practitioners, open to guides and practitioners beyond those trained by FTHub. Members connect through regional groups and a Free/Pro membership structure, with volunteer Seedlings Leaders organizing local calls and connections.
What’s the difference between Hub Seedlings Free and Hub Seedlings Pro?
Hub Seedlings Free centers on connection and peer support, regional calls, a newsletter and access to public events. Hub Seedlings Pro adds professional development: mentorship, tools, research access, and eight practice-building courses on topics like pricing and digital presence.
What do the Hub Seedlings Pro practice-building courses cover?
The eight courses cover the business side certification doesn’t: positioning, pricing, digital presence, group programs, working with organizations, social prescribing, financial essentials and scaling a practice.
How does research from the Forest Therapy Institute Lab reach practitioners?
The Lab studies Forest Bathing, Forest Therapy and nature-based interventions, and shares findings through quarterly research briefings and early access for Hub Seedlings Pro Annual members. Practitioners can also feed field data and observations back into the Lab’s research.
Is the Hub Seedlings Global Network open to practitioners outside FTHub training?
Yes. Director Erika DiPasquale says the network is open to nature-based health professionals beyond FTHub-trained practitioners, bringing together students, new guides and experienced practitioners from different backgrounds.
