A New Garden from Italy
Reflections by Brother Luke
Visitors to New Skete today who enter our Holy Wisdom Temple walk through a garden, either along a level path from a parking area behind the east end of the church or up a gentle ramp that rises from the road around our original Transfiguration Temple. This garden space is adorned with flowers, shrubs, and trees that are native to our region. Stones and boulders of varying sizes that were moved into this place from other parts of our property form the walls and terraces. The east end of the garden features two ponds with fish and frogs. In early spring the trees burst forth in bloom, and the ponds’ inhabitants serenade us with the songs of the croakers.
It was not always thus!
When the Holy Wisdom Temple was built in the early 1980s, access to the main entrance was via a bank of over 30 steps.
Shoveling the snow off of those steps was a major chore in the winter;
especially after high netting was added in an attempt to keep deer away from the plants. It was also more than a little intimidating for many to mount those stairs, and it was impossible for anyone with physical disabilities. Indeed, with safety in mind, our insurance company told us they wanted us to put a handrail up the middle of the steps, even though it already had handrails on both sides of the steps.
So, in the summer of 2005 we began to toss around the idea of restructuring the entrance to our main worship space. First, at Brother Elias’ suggestion, we looked into building a driveway that would pass right in front of the main entrance, where people could be let off from cars. Unfortunately, the area was too confined to accommodate such a road, so a pedestrian ramp became our next option. We weren’t sure if that would be possible, either, so we decided to engage a landscape architect. Who?
Our local village of Cambridge was beginning the process of establishing a sister city arrangement with the town of Scontrone, Italy. At one of the planning sessions Brother Stavros attended as our representative, he met a man whom we ultimately decided to hire to draw up a plan for our new entrance with a ramp and garden. Hence the Italian connection!
It featured very large stones to be used as walls. We had also engaged an architect to create a set of baseline architectural drawings of our monastery, which we could use as a reference for future renovations of our existing buildings. We wanted him to help us with the ramp and railings. Jerome, the contractor from Vermont who maintained our road, was tapped to build this new entrance and garden. We also had a part-time employee who was helping us learn about development and stewardship; her task was to create a capital campaign to fund this project. As Brother Ambrose likes to say, “We’ll jump off that bridge when we get there.” So we jumped off the bridge into a major project.
Of course we ran into the usual bumps in the road, including rising costs and differing perspectives between architect and contractor on placement of the wall stones.
However, we also saw steady progress toward a new Welcome Garden and access walkway to our church,
which now provides a quiet space for meditation, an opening gathering space for the entrance antiphons for Sunday and Feast Day Divine Liturgies, and the focal point for our Fall Animal Blessing prayer service.
After all the dust settled and the construction work was done, we had a new entrance, gained through the generous support of many friends and the hard work of all those involved in planning and constructing the new entrance.
After a particularly hard winter a few years after the project was completed, a couple of the large stones were dislodged from their location. Jerome and his crew returned and reset the stones, slightly revising the arrangement, and we have had no further problems with the walls. While they were dealing with the stones, they also made an adjustment in the ponds to solve a leak that had sprung up between the two ponds. Accomplishing projects such as this one is never simple, but each one teaches us new lessons, sometimes about management, but also about how to persevere in the face of trials. For us, that always brings us back to our faith and our commitment to our common life. Engaging in this project was a community decision, and it is now an integral part of our life.
Visitors to New Skete today who enter our Holy Wisdom Temple walk through a garden, either along a level path from a parking area behind the east end of the church or up a gentle ramp that rises from the road around our original Transfiguration Temple. This garden space is adorned with flowers, shrubs, and trees that are native to our region. Stones and boulders of varying sizes that were moved into this place from other parts of our property form the walls and terraces. The east end of the garden features two ponds with fish and frogs. In early spring the trees burst forth in bloom, and the ponds’ inhabitants serenade us with the songs of the croakers.
When the Holy Wisdom Temple was built in the early 1980s, access to the main entrance was via a bank of over 30 steps.
Our local village of Cambridge was beginning the process of establishing a sister city arrangement with the town of Scontrone, Italy. At one of the planning sessions Brother Stavros attended as our representative, he met a man whom we ultimately decided to hire to draw up a plan for our new entrance with a ramp and garden. Hence the Italian connection!
Of course we ran into the usual bumps in the road, including rising costs and differing perspectives between architect and contractor on placement of the wall stones.
After a particularly hard winter a few years after the project was completed, a couple of the large stones were dislodged from their location. Jerome and his crew returned and reset the stones, slightly revising the arrangement, and we have had no further problems with the walls. While they were dealing with the stones, they also made an adjustment in the ponds to solve a leak that had sprung up between the two ponds. Accomplishing projects such as this one is never simple, but each one teaches us new lessons, sometimes about management, but also about how to persevere in the face of trials. For us, that always brings us back to our faith and our commitment to our common life. Engaging in this project was a community decision, and it is now an integral part of our life.
