Native Virginia plants soon will help create a place for reflection, mediation and remembrance for Nelson County in the form of a peace garden.
The Nelson County Rotary Club and the high school’s Interact Club began working on the peace garden last Friday, the International Day of Peace for 2012. The 484 square-foot garden will be incorporated into the Blue Ridge Medical Center’s landscaping. It will take about one year for the first phase of work to be completed; however, it will take several years for a majority of the plants to grow in.
“This is a calm, peaceful place for whatever people want to use it for,” said Michelle Dilendorf, the Nelson County Rotary Club’s president.
Each year Rotary International chooses a message for the Rotarians to carry out. When Dilendorf heard this year’s theme, “peace though service,” she immediately thought of one of her fellow Nelson Rotarians, Kia Scherr.
Scherr’s husband and daughter were killed in a terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008 while the family was there on a peace mission. After their deaths, Scherr continued with her mission, promoting peace and conflict resolution among young people around the world, Dilendorf said.
“Her story is so powerful,” Dilendorf said. “You can see her grief, but you can see her pack her grief up and turn it into a positive force for the world.”
Scherr and her daughter loved to be outside in nature, which inspired Dilendorf to create a peace garden for the county, providing a place in nature for families to grieve or celebrate together.
The garden would be open to everyone.
“It wouldn’t be true to the idea of peace and conflict resolution if it was exclusive,” Dilendorf said. “That’s kind of counter-intuitive I think.”
Some ideas for the garden are to use it to host peer meditation and conflict resolution classes for middle and high school students, Dilendorf said.
Peggy Whitehead, the Blue Ridge Medical Center’s executive director and a Nelson Rotarian, said the center was excited for the garden.
“We think it will serve the purpose envisioned by Rotarians, which is to create a space symbolic of peace and harmony in our world,” Whitehead said. “The gardens will also be an opportunity for education for our patients and community members who have an interest in knowing more about the plants we are growing and the generous collaborators who have contributed to the garden.”
One of the benefits of locating the garden at the medical center is that it will provide a calming place for patients who might be scared of the doctor. It would also be a place for reflection and decompression for caregivers and the medical staff, Dilendorf said.
“This would be a place for to take a deep breath and think about things without being inside a building or foreign environment,” she said.
It was these reasons and the center’s ongoing landscaping project that caused Dilendorf to ask Whitehead about incorporating the garden into the center’s landscape plan. Whitehead then brought it before the center’s board where the idea was approved.
Part of the new center’s construction plan involves a garden made entirely of native plants in memory of Uri Levi, one of the patients and friends of the center who had always dreamed of a meditation garden with medicinal plants that had been used throughout history.
“We were thrilled when the Rotary Club approached us with the idea of a ‘peace garden’ as part of the landscaping plan, and offered to help by seeking funding to help make it a reality,” Whitehead said. “We are really pleased to be breaking ground on this very special portion of the gardens and landscaping for the expansion of the medical center.”
Some of the design features include a gazebo with vines, like Virginia Creeper, plus stone pathways and shaded areas.
Ideas for artwork in the garden, as well as bricks honoring events or loved ones, are being discussed by the Rotary Club.
The garden is expected to cost between $750 and $1,000. The additional landscaping at the center is estimated at $30,000. The project is funded by donations and grants, both Whitehead and Dilendorf said.
A raffle will be held at the Rotary’s pancake fundraiser on election day for the garden.
The labor is being done by the 24 rotary members and the affiliated interact club at the high school. Volunteering and doing the project work is part of the Rotary’s requirements with their projects, Dilendorf said.
A lot of the materials for the stone pathways have been donated, as well as the gazebo. Some of the plants were donated also.
The garden will be an ongoing project for the club and community.
“It will take ongoing commitment from the community and staff to achieve everything we are dreaming about, but we hope this will always be a space where people can work together in harmony toward a common goal and live up to the ideas behind the Rotary Club’s ‘Peace Garden,’” Whitehead said.
The center has already been working with different county organizations including the garden club, the master naturalists, master gardeners, the historical society, the Wintergreen Nature Foundation and the extension service.
The goal is to expand it a little bit every year and to hopefully inspire other groups to put in peace gardens throughout Nelson, Dilendorf said.
“We hope that ripple effect spreads throughout the country and the world,” Dilendorf said. “It’s acting locally and thinking globally.”
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