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GIFTS FROM GOD
By LINDA M. LINONIS
warren
Helen Garrigus has dug a niche in the Peace Garden and outdoor chapel garden at Christ Episcopal Church.
She’s coordinated work in the Peace Garden for eight of the 10 years she’s been a church member. The garden, established in 1994, is one of three at the church. It will be the site of a Mass in the Grass planned for next Saturday.
“Working in the garden brings you in touch with nature and the Creator,” Garrigus said, adding that she doesn’t see it as work. “It’s a labor of love.”
That outlook may have been cultivated when she was a child who liked to pick flowers in gardens grown by her father and grandmothers. “They had beautiful gardens,” she recalled.
“I think it’s therapeutic. You put a lot into it and see it take shape,” she said. “You’re so at peace when you’re in the garden. ... Your mind is still,” she said. Outdoor services allow participants to be closer to nature and God.”
The 10 a.m. Sunday Masses begin this weekend at the outdoor chapel garden. Garrigus said Boy Scouts built the altar as a project. Benches will fill grassy areas, and garden umbrellas will protect worshipers while providing a splash of color and whimsy.
This garden, she said, has been a wonderful setting for baptisms, anniversary services and pet blessings. “People seem to appreciate the space and enjoy the tranquility,” she said.
Among the plants featured are flowering plum, variegated dogwood, butterfly bush, hydrangea, specimen hostas, clematis, knockout roses, tulips and Missour primrose (sundrops). Garrigus said she liked gunnera insignis, known as “poor man’s parasol,” because it “fills in space quickly. It has a yellow flower near the ground and huge leaves resembling elephant ears.
“Gardens are the gifts that God and Mother Nature give us,” she said.
The design of the Peace Garden features a brick walkway in the form of a Celtic cross. Church members can buy bricks in honor or in memory of someone.
Emphasizing the name of the garden, a stone wall has the word peace chiseled in 14 languages including Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese.
Garrigus said she uses large urns planted with annuals to lend continual color to the garden; this season’s choice is purple petunias. Perennials bloom throughout the season; Garrigus strives to have plants flowering at different times to provide a constant show.
“You get lost in it,” Garrigus said of gardening. “Your heart fills fulfilled.”
Plants in the Peace Garden include Missouri primrose, pink corabells, tall phlox, echinacea, day lilies, pink achillea from the yarrow family, rudbeckia, white and purple allium. Boxwood is used to frame planting areas.
A statue of St. Fiacre, patron of gardeners, also has a place in the garden. Church member Joe Gladd also has made various “garden art” plaques with messages such as “life began in a garden” and “FROG — fully rely on God.”
Christ Episcopal also has a Biblical Garden, or Garth Garden, located in a long corridor in the church complex. It’s framed by a wall of glass and the east wall of the nave of the church and open at the top.
Gladd, a church member since birth, tends the garden. “It’s a peaceful place. I love being in it,” he said.
Gladd said the Biblical Garden features a range of plants. Many have names appropriate for the setting or have a biblical connection.
They include Guardian Angel, Blue Angle, Stain Glass, Holy Mouse Ears, Earth Angel and Praying Hands hostas, burning bush, Star of Bethlehem, Christmas rose, speedwell Veronica, bleeding heart, lavender, fig tree, lily-of-the-valley, lavender, Jacob’s ladder and lamb’s ear.
Gladd said a pathway in the garden reflects a slithering snake, a nod to the Garden of Eden. A metal sculpture of a sun decorates a wall, and there is a fountain.
The protected garden has been a nesting place for a Mallard duck for a few years; she has successfully hatched her brood there. They have enjoyed the water feature, Gladd said.
He has photos of the mother duck and her ducklings being escorted from the building. Gladd and Garrigus said they believed an offspring of the duck is now nesting in the Peace Garden.