Peabody Garden dedicated, newly decorated

Feb. 10 marked the dedication of the renovated Peabody Garden, after months of construction work. The new garden honors the former Peabody School. 

Marilyn Ferrell | gcsunade.com

The newly installed art piece in Peabody Garden glows steadily during the night. The sculpture represents the continuous influence that Peabody alumni have on Georgia College.

The garden was originally a project undertaken by university president Guy Wells during his term in 1934 to improve the Peabody School’s appearance. During this time, the garden was across the street from its present day location but was lost when alumni decided to sell the Cathy Alumni Center to establish a scholarship endowment. But, former GC president Dorothy Leland said the college would re-establish the garden on the college campus.

The Peabody School existed from 1891 to 2000 as a public school for Baldwin County and a practice school for education majors at Georgia College. For more than a century it stood, until finally budget cuts forced it to close in 2000. The garden is to be a symbol of the Peabody legacy by the alumni of the school, who were the driving force behind the project.

“The alumni are very dedicated to their alma mater,” said Stephen Stewart, an associate professor of reading at the John H. Lounsbury School of Education.

Stewart served on the original alumni board and was called back to help with the relocation and artwork for the garden. He said it was the alumni of the school, who are mostly women as there were few men at the school then, that were behind the garden’s re-dedication.

“They have such wonderful memories of being here, forming life-long friendships and the college understands that,” Stewart said.

During the ceremony, Interim President Stas Preczewski spoke of the Peabody alumni and how he hopes the class of 2012 will one day be as steadfast in their goals as the ladies of Peabody.

The alumni association, through various donations, funded the project. The donations helped fund the commissioning for the second piece of public art for the garden to honor the Peabody alumni.

The garden, while officially open, is not completely finished, as there are several flowers and shrubbery that will take a few months to fully blossom, and the grass is still not fully grown yet; however, this did not seem to deter the alumni at the ceremony, who were full of smiles and looked at the new garden with approval.

Artist Marc Moulton made the garden’s centerpiece, which is a large, spiral cylinder with various letters, English grammar signs and mathematical symbols on it that lights up at night. Lisa Tuttle, the public arts consultant who helped find Moulton, sees the lights as representing abstract knowledge.

“The letters spread out in a circle, to display the widening knowledge,” Tuttle said. “The Peabody school did so much for schools in the south, and this display helps commemorate the school and the effects of philanthropy in a very contemporary way. It’s the ongoing legacy of students who became teachers.”

Amy Amason, vice prescient for external relations and university advancement, is very excited about the garden being re-opened and hopes, like Tuttle, that it becomes a way of honoring the Peabody school.

“I’m very excited to re-establish the garden honoring our Peabody legacy as well as the enhancements to the garden for future use,” Amason said.

It’s the hope of those who helped fund it that it becomes not just a symbol for the Peabody school but also a place to hang out.

“I have ideas that the school will use it as a meeting place, saying ‘meet me at the Peabody garden.’ I think it’ll be a place for people to want to go to. It’ll compliment the front of Russell perfectly,” Stewart said.

It’s not only the faculty and alumni who hope it becomes a meeting place, but students as well are hopeful and looking forward to it becoming available for everyday use.

“I’d come here to study now, if anything,” freshman undeclared Kevin Pfeifer said. “I’m pretty humbled by it. Seeing it as a mud pit, its nice to see it improved.”

The garden has benches, a paved area surrounded by shrubbery and is now open for all to use.

Posted by BenedictEsposito on Feb 16 2012. Filed under Lead stories, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.