Meditation Garden – Labyrinth

Congratulations to Don Atkiss and all of our St. John’s garden committee volunteers!  Our St. John’s Gardens were selected by the Norristown Garden Club for their Landscape Design Award for the best public garden this year (2023)!

 

 

St. John’s Meditation Garden & Labyrinth is located between our two parking lots just west of our sanctuary along Rt. 63, Main Street. Our members, friends, and the Lansdale community are welcome to use our garden as a place to walk or sit and pray, meditate, reflect, think and find God in the beauty of the outdoors near our sanctuary.  There is a lighted, accessible path leading from the St. John’s front courtyard/elevator entrance of the church building across the front lawn and parking lot to the Meditation Garden.  This project was long envisioned by our late Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Sue Bertolette, and after many years and demolition of some old structures, our labyrinth and meditation garden were finally built in the fall of 2014 and dedicated on May 17, 2015.

 

 

This article appeared in the PSEC Communitas publication distributed as a church bulletin insert throughout the UCC Pa. Southeast Conference churches on Sunday, October 2, 2016.

 

 

At the top of the garden near our barn is the ‘orb’ – the United Church of Christ cross logo in a ‘statue’ form.  The design was commissioned by then-St. John’s member Herman Ahrens (then a member of the PSEC staff) in the early 1980’s, and for about 30 years this orb sat on top of the ‘Church House’ office headquarters of our UCC Pennsylvania Southeast Conference building in Collegeville. When that building was sold in 2014 and the PSEC moved to an office complex in Pottstown, it was decided that the orb should return to St. John’s, and the timing was just right to incorporate it into the design of our then new Meditation Garden!

 

Below: Top: Herman & Lorene Ahrens & the UCC Orb on the PSEC Church House building, Collegeville, Pa. May 19, 2013.  Center & Bottom: Dedication of Herman C. Ahrens, Jr. Memorial Marker in the Meditation Garden – October 1, 2017 

Click here to read an article about St. John’s Meditation Garden from the Reporter newspaper December 1, 2014

 

Below: Left: The UCC Orb in St. John’s Meditation Garden – Christmas Eve, 2014.  Center & Right:  Labyrinth dedication ceremony, Sunday, May 17, 2015. 

 

 

 

We invite everyone (church members AND the Lansdale area community) to make use of our beautiful St. John’s Meditation Garden and Labyrinth on W. Main Street in Lansdale!