Peace Garden
Cultivating Healing and Growth
Many children who come to our Salina West campus have experienced severe trauma.
Our organic Peace Garden gives youth a hands-on learning experience while enjoying the therapeutic benefits of the natural world. Young people ages 6-18 learn to work with others cooperatively and acquire skills they can take with them when they leave.
Time in the Peace Garden teaches youth how to create rather than tear down. They learn the difference between solitude and loneliness. They discover silence as a balm to stress.
Nature Helps Kids Heal
Most of the children in our care have no idea where food comes from. They’ve never seen vegetables in the ground, nor experienced the satisfaction of pulling a new carrot from the soil. They’ve never eaten snow peas off the vine, nor bitten into a juicy, sun-ripened tomato.
The Peace Garden lets children:
- Participate in enriching outdoor experiences
- Learn where food comes from
- Develop a hobby that produces, rather than consumes
- Learn how to handle adversity (i.e., droughts, storms, pests)
- Foster respect and love for nature
- Become motivated to eat fruits and vegetables
- Learn patience while nurturing living things
- Experience a sense of accomplishment by contributing to the facility’s kitchen
You can help children heal through the Peace Garden by contributing to our wish list:
- $20 will buy vegetable and flower seeds
- $40 will buy mulch for trees and flower beds
- $60 will buy a garden cart
- $100 will buy a fruit tree or a rain barrel
- $200 will buy a compost tumbler
