DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — The sounds of a flowing stream and happy kids fill the air in a most unlikely place – next to the parking lot in the Lakewood Shopping Center.

El Futuro, a nonprofit mental health and substance use treatment clinic has created a new therapeutic garden complete with a recycling creek, brilliant mural and community garden.

“What we hope this becomes is a place of community connection where people can form relationships, which is really at the heart of mental illness in the immigrant community,” said Dr. Luke Smith, Executive Director at El Futuro. “People have lost supportive healthy relationships, maybe because of mental illness but sometimes just because of immigration.”

Smith is a psychiatrist who started El Futuro in 2004 as a place where Spanish-speaking immigrants can get culturally-responsive mental health services at clinics in Durham and Siler City.

The staff of fifty serves up to