Peace and Healing Garden

PEACE & HEALING GARDEN FOR AURARIA CAMPUS

Join us in realizing this vision.

"A PLACE FOR REST, REFLECTION & MEDITATION.”

-Virginia Castro, Auraria Historical Advocacy Council President

View this information in PDF form HERE »

Background

This land possesses a rich history of CONNECTION & GROWTH.

Many different cultures have flowed through and settled on this site for thousands of years due to abundance from the rivers. Descendants of the Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations maintain ties to this land.

The Peace and Healing Garden will begin to restore an understanding for what this place meant to so many who occupied it before. 

In the late 1960s, Denver’s Urban Renewal Authority DISPLACED THE COMMUNITY, making way for Auraria Campus. A single block on Historic Ninth Street Park is the only remaining remnant of the now-gone neighborhood.

The Peace and Healing Garden will honor those who lived and passed through these spaces across the generations.

In the 1920s, this area, known as OLD WESTSIDE, was a neighborhood of 300+ primarily Latino/ Hispanic families who worked, worshiped, and raised their children in a safe community.

The Peace and Healing Garden will interweave displaced ecologies & people into a shared territory by laying a foundation of High Plains planting to celebrate Indigenous cultures, punctuated with plants cherished by Displaced Aurarians.

Purpose

“The Garden, 54 years into the displacement, will be designed to provide a sense of spiritual, physical, and emotional healing not only for the displaced and their descendants but all others on the campus needing A PLACE FOR REST, REFLECTION & MEDITATION.”

- Virginia Castro, Auraria Historical Advocacy Council President

The Proposed Space

The proposed 7,000 sq.ft. Peace and Healing Garden is a beautiful space for tranquil reflection. A looped pathway and alternating zones of open and enclosed spaces will be immersed in xeric, native plantings of perennials, grasses, deciduous and evergreen trees.

Together, we can create a place for rest, reflection, & meditation in the heart of Auraria Campus. Join us in realizing this vision.

The vision for the Peace & Healing Garden is the result of an ongoing collaboration between the Auraria Historical Advocacy Council, Displaced Aurarians & their descendants, & staff from AHEC, CCD, MSU, & UCD, with landscape design by Didier Design Studio.