In the hustle and bustle of assignments, sporting events, and co-curricular activities, life on a college campus can become quite busy and stressful. However, on the campus of Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, there is a place where students, faculty, and staff can all go to relax – the Peace Garden. This garden was started by sisters Lella and Faith Shaffner. Both are Avery County natives. Lella graduated from Lees-McRae in 2004, and Faith in 2007. I took time from the hustle and bustle of life to interview them about what the garden has given to them and to
the Lees-McRae community.

Where did the idea of the Peace Garden come from?

Lella: The College’s counselor wanted to see a garden by the McRae House rather than a parking lot, so she sent out a call for people with garden design skills. I referred Faith, something she still likes to bring up when things are going wrong.  

Faith: When I was creating my preliminary plans for the garden, I reached a point in which I had a very nice plan, but I felt that it was missing something. Having already considered various themes, I vaguely remembered a snippet from a news story regarding an event at a “Peace Garden” in Japan. After a little research, I knew that Lees-McRae could benefit from the spiritual and architectural elements of a Peace Garden, reminding all of us of our unity and brightening the whole campus with its array of colors in a cottage-style garden. I wanted a place for the plants to mix and mingle freely, reaching beyond their borders, exhuming sweet smells and fresh drops of dew.

What has the Peace Garden given you?

Faith: The Peace Garden has given me, first and foremost, a canvas upon which I could express my art fully. I started with an expanse of sod and basic tools and, with the sweat of my brow and the help of family and friends, the garden has flourished and is in itself evidence of my thankfulness for those who care for me and for my good health.

Lella: The Peace Garden has given me and Faith, as well as our parents, unity and retreat. We work on the garden as a family, which I think represents the message of unity that a peace garden is suppose to entail.

What do you think the Peace Garden has given to others?

Faith: I believe it has given Lees-McRae community members a place of respite and cultivated green. I enjoy giving plants and dried leaves to others, but most of all, I enjoy picking a leaf from a plant, breaking it, and telling a gardening acolyte to smell it. Watching their faces brighten in surprise at the natural fragrance is one of my favorite gardening moments.

What types of plants are in the garden?

Lella: We’ve really strived for variety in the garden. There is a plant there for everyone.  We’ve got the usual daylilies, sunflowers and coneflowers, but we also have bog plants, herbs, ornamental grasses, and an unusual collection of shrubs and trees.

Faith: The focus of the garden is on natives, fruit-producers, and herbs. I also have included an assortment of what I fondly call “half-natives,” which are varieties of our native plants that have been bred for a particular attribute. For instance, native Heuchera grows just a few hundred feet away in the forest nearby and occurs in the garden, but the garden also contains seven other varieties of Heuchera.

What are the indigenous plants in the garden?

Faith: We have quite a few straight-out unadulterated natives, but they are more difficult and often more expensive to procure as many of them are rare.

Lella: As of now, one can find red and large-flowered trilliums, solomon’s seal, jack-in-the-pulpit, turtle’s head, crested iris, and wood ferns. The wildflower bed is a new feature, though, so there will be many more native wildflowers planted soon.

What plans do you have for the garden in the future?

Faith: My plans include extending the native wildflowers throughout the garden, to either expand or revamp the annual vegetable project, and hope for the funds to come through for the Outdoor Classroom project so entire classes can finally meet comfortably in the garden.

Lella: The big focus is to incorporate an outdoor classroom that will allow instructors to teach traditionally or experientially in an outdoor setting.

What is your favorite memory here in the garden?

Faith: This is obviously a difficult question to answer.  I do wish I could primarily offer an awe-inspiring answer, but my favorite memory involves ridding the ground of an old, abandoned project that sat in the garden like a sore thumb. It was left by another faculty member with good intentions, but instead was an expensive mass of mud and rocks, unsightly and huge, that I had to pick away at little by little as I tried to create the rest of the garden. A Mountain Day came and swept away the huge boulders through team-effort, and during the summer, my family and I created a depression, placed a liner and collected and placed many of our special native pudding  stones, some water plants and goldfish, and made a pond, complete with solar pump. The moment that solar pump started spraying water into the air is my favorite memory by far.

Lella: What a great question! This Spring’s Mountain Day is my favorite memory because the students who volunteered knew about my passion for the garden, and my own energy seemed to infect them.  We got more work and fun accomplished in that day than usually occurs in months.  Most of the students left with yellow hands after leaving their handprints on the seats of newly-painted picnic tables.  The fun they had that day is testament through those signatures.

During annual Mountain Day of Service at Lees-McRae College, students, faculty, and staff volunteer their services on and around campus. What happens on the Mountain Day of Service here in the Peace Garden?

Faith: Mountain Days are always extremely rewarding but are also tiring. Dealing with students who have perhaps never gardened at all and teaching them the basic is very gratifying, but it can be very frustrating when that same lack of knowledge causes the loss of a beloved plant or a plan to be implemented haphazardly.

Lella: Each Mountain Day is different. There are always maintenance chores to be done, like weeding and mulching.  However, Mountain Day also spawns some of our most creative projects, such as the creation of the peace arch.  The most important activity that takes place is the bonding between students and the discoveries students make about nature in the garden through their experience.

Final thoughts?

Lella: You won’t see just Faith and me at the Peace Garden regularly. Our parents have been an equal part of its creation.  People don’t realize it, but this has been as much of a family project as it has been a campus project, and it is that uncommon kind of teamwork that makes the garden strong on all fronts.  It is like a stage performance where Faith and I are the leading actors, while Mom and Dad work backstage.  Our parents love to garden, too, and their modest work without recognition always reminds Faith and me what the Peace Garden is about.