The Peace Garden at Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Launched in 2015 in partnership with Peace Quest Regina, Knox-Metropolitan’s Peace Garden is a place of beauty and reflection in the heart of Regina’s downtown, on Treaty 4 Territory. Planted with a variety of pollinator plants and ornamental blooms, the garden is organized and maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers who donate their time to its tending over the season. “It’s a way of connecting with people,” says Peace Garden volunteer Bob Ivanochko. “Particularly when we have larger groups of people working on it, people passing by stop to chat and we end up discussing all kinds of things, including peace.”
The cultivation of peace gardens is practiced around the world as a dedication to the ideas of peace and social justice, with the gardens themselves providing the community and passers-by with an opportunity for pause and reflection. “Working on a garden is community-building,” says volunteer Florence Stratton. “We need beauty in our lives. It’s an opportunity to cultivate those values of peace and justice — one is cultivating them in a symbolic way when working on the garden but that’s important too. There’s a whole community involved, and we’re all involved when we see the garden, and work in the garden.”
“It’s always surprising and heartening to me, just the number of people who stop by to tell us what a great job we’re doing,” says Phil Johnson, a master gardener who has been volunteering with the Peace Garden for the past three years. “The plants that we put in are a lot of pollinators that are friendly to the bees, and other creatures that pollinate the world. So, this is a little oasis for them down here. It’s a place to rest and gather your thoughts, and it gives me an opportunity to expand the idea of peace and harmony to the natural world, in the hopes that that will extend to the world of people.”
Interested in learning how you can get involved? Drop us a line at info@knoxmetregina.org.