Garden of Reflection and Remembrance at the University of Maryland

Students gathered here before anyone designed it.

Wooden bench tucked among tall plants in warm light at the Garden of Reflection and Remembrance

WHERE

College Park, MD

PARTNER INSTITUTION

University of Maryland

Visit

Where it is

1101 Memorial Chapel, College Park, MD 20742

What happens here

The garden serves multiple university populations in diverse ways, offering respite, healing, and contemplation while catalyzing connections between groups and cultures across a large campus. The Student Affairs Office programs both the labyrinth and the wider memorial garden around multiculturalism, encouraging people to take time for reflection and renewal. The labyrinth's impact reaches well beyond chapel and counseling use, with plans to bring it into coursework and other learning experiences. Visitors write in the journals: a research team reviewing nearly five years of them narrowed to 15 journals holding 3,162 entries, drawings included.

Find this Sacred Place

Garden of Reflection and Remembrance at the University of Maryland

HOW IT CAME TO BE

They found the spot without being told.

Labyrinth lit with candles at dusk in the finished Garden of Reflection and Remembrance

Hand-drawn site plan of the Garden of Reflection and Remembrance before it was built, showing the planned stone brick labyrinth

Drag to see the transformation.

The Need

The concept originated in students' response to national tragedies — the Virginia Tech massacre, the terrorist attacks of September 11. Trying to process and understand that loss, students unconsciously gravitated to one spot adjacent to the Veterans Memorial, a soon-to-be sacred space that was not yet anything.

The Vision

A forward-thinking Student Affairs Department, in partnership with an interfaith campus community, envisioned an interfaith garden and labyrinth at Memorial Chapel in the heart of campus.

The Transformation

UMCP landscape architecture students designed it themselves. The garden that resulted is a model other universities and schools nationwide might consider for their own interfaith campus greenspace. In early 2016 a research team from the Adele H. Stamp Student Union released The Gardened Heart: Garden of Reflection and Remembrance Journal Project, asking what people were sharing or experiencing through the journals.

How a Sacred Place comes to be →

WHO TENDS IT