Scarritt Bennitt Center International Peace Garden

For neighbors crossing campus, retreat guests, and visitors seeking a quiet moment, Scarritt Bennett Center’s International Peace Garden offers a place for reflection in Midtown Nashville. The center is renewing this approximately one-acre landscape to better accommodate the people who use it each day, with accessible pathways, places to sit, and gathering areas that support weddings, retreats, and community events alongside walking prayer. The renewal began with the people connected to the garden’s history. In fall 2025, the Scarritt College Alumni Board raised more than $20,000 to initiate the project in honor of alumna Kathryn Mitchem. Their effort builds on the legacy of the garden’s 35-foot, seven-circuit medieval walking prayer labyrinth, designed by Battle Beasley and installed in April 2004.

CSDG is providing landscape architecture services, using the campus’s historic Neo-Collegiate Gothic architecture and existing material palette as the starting point for the design. Tennessee Crab Orchard stone complements the surrounding buildings and forms seating walls where visitors can pause on their own or gather with others. A native planting palette is intended to increase canopy coverage and create soft, defined edges within the garden, giving structure to the space while connecting new improvements to their setting. Accessible pathways improve circulation, while flexible gathering areas allow space for small-group activities and larger community events. These features address the garden’s varied uses, allowing it to serve as both a place for individual reflection and a setting for shared occasions. An integrated water feature adds another point of interest within the contemplative landscape. The garden’s spiritual significance also informs the renewal. Seven pillars reflect Scarritt Bennett Center’s mission and core values, and a new Peace Pole serves as a focal point symbolizing peace and solidarity. Together, these elements carry the garden’s purpose into its renewed design.

CSDG is collaborating with Pillars Development, the project liaison who coordinates community needs with broader project goals, and Innate Creations, which provides specialized labyrinth design consulting. Innate Creations contributes expertise in labyrinth education, layout, materials, construction, and installation, alongside CSDG’s landscape architecture work. The resulting design supports Scarritt Bennett Center’s goal of welcoming people from different backgrounds and walks of life into a familiar community space. By connecting the garden’s history with practical improvements for movement, rest, and gathering, the renewal is intended to make room for both everyday visits and the occasions that bring people together.