PVCC’s Memorial Garden gets a Makeover
At the north end of PVCC’s main building, overlooking mountains and a winding road, there is a quiet garden. PVCC’s Memorial Garden, to be exact. It has stood there for more than two decades, becoming almost an outdoor extension of the student lounge. When PVCC still had most classes on campus, it was not a rare sight to see students sitting in the garden socializing, doing homework, or enjoying the scenery of the garden and surrounding mountains. But do students know the story of PVCC’s Memorial Garden?
The garden was founded in 1999 by former Professor of Philosophy Marietta McCarty, who dedicated it to her grandmother, Plum. An email from Ben Copeland and David Lermann about the garden touched on McCarty’s relationship to it, “For many years Marietta could be found out there with her students. They would prune while discussing life’s thorniest problems, weed while gravely examining life and death, spend time together on the mulched beds or perched on the gently curved stone walls.” The garden was a peaceful respite from all the stress and deadlines of school.
When McCarty retired from PVCC and began writing books on philosophy, the garden went mostly untended. It was not abandoned, but it became overgrown and weathered. Years of students populating the garden and exposure to the elements began to age the garden — its metaphorical gray hairs began to show.
But hope was not lost for the garden. McCarty returned to PVCC this fall and, with the help of The Garden Spot’s landscaping crew and an anonymous benefactor, breathed fresh air into the Memorial Garden. New plant life, seating, and stone walls have been introduced to the garden, and the fruits of this refurbishing will be apparent in the upcoming spring months.
David Lerman and Ben Copeland concluded their email with an optimistic message: “Marietta sends her love and offers this place for rejuvenation during these hard times and hopefully, hopefully, we can again use this lovely space to work with our students next year.”
