The Loveland Peace Garden: A Tiny Peace Garden

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Child of Peace, sculpted by Edward F. Hoffman III, is the central element in the Loveland Peace Garden.

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The path to peace—global, local, and personal—seems always paved with contention. In late 1990, when tension and conflict escalated in the Persian Gulf, my wife and I, residents of Loveland, Colorado, discovered a small, newly formed local group whose members shared our concerns for the welfare of all people involved. The first few meetings of what became known as the Loveland Coalition for Peace were somewhat depressing, but we soon began to direct our feelings into positive action. Of all the activities we initiated, the most positive and lasting has been the Loveland Peace Garden.

The central element of this garden was also its inspiration: Edward F. Hoffman III’s life-sized bronze statue called Child of Peace depicting a naked young boy holding a dove to his breast and balancing on one foot on the back of a tortoise. Standing atop a rise at the edge of a large, well-kept lawn, the statue overlooks a broad flagstone plaza that surrounds an ornate brick gazebo. It is part of the 18-acre Benson Sculpture Park, which belongs to the City of Loveland. The park grounds are kept up by the city, but civic organizations that “adopt” statues design, plant, and maintain gardens surrounding them. The city provides plants, soil amendments, and other materials, such as bricks and flagstones. It seemed only natural that the Loveland Coalition for Peace should adopt the Child of Peace sculpture and plant a garden around it.

With advice from Betsy Strauch, The Herb Companion’s assistant editor and a Master Gardener, I designed the garden to include perennial herbs that are hardy in our Zone 5 climate and that carry connotations of peace and harmony, based on the Language of Flowers: A Book of Victorian Floral Sentiments, by Kathleen Gips (Chagrin Falls, Ohio: Pine Creek Herbs, 1990). We planted lavender (for “distrust” but also for “loyalty”) in front of the statue as a backdrop for the bronze nameplate. To the sides and front of the nameplate is a ground cover of thyme (for “courage” and “happiness”) and golden oregano (for “joy”). Rue (for “purification”, “virtue”, and “understanding”) grows on either side of the statue. A large mound of southernwood (for “perseverance”) rises behind the statue, flanked by smaller mounds of gray santolina (for “protection”). A low, heart-shaped hedge of germander (for “faithfulness”) encircles the garden, and the corners and edges are filled in with thyme. A brick mowing strip allows a lawn mower to get right up to the garden’s edge without damaging the plants.

The city designates one weekend day each year, usually in mid-June, for the adopting organizations to groom and plant or replant their gardens. On a sunny June 20, 1991, the Loveland Coalition for Peace members (including several children) came out with gardening tools and picnic lunches to till and plant the garden. Within an hour after removing the sod, the enthusiastic group had thoroughly loosened the soil to more than a spade’s depth and worked in a large bale of peat. By lunchtime, the 9-by-9-foot garden was completely planted. The last task—positioning the germander plants for the heart-shaped hedge—required some measurements that seemed overly picky in the celebratory mood of the moment, but the ultimate symmetry of the hedge was worth the work.

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