One of the many angel statues in the Unity of Bon Air Meditation Gardens
No one knows where they all came from.
Some are stern, and some are smiling. Some have broken wings.
Some are tall. Some are tiny, tucked between tree roots.
Some look suspiciously like fairies. But that’s OK; when an angel appears, she’s welcome here.
“I think if something’s going to show up, it finds a home. And it’s meaningful to people,” says Joanne Einsmann. She’s the garden coordinator for Unity of Bon Air’s Meditation Gardens, a hidden sanctuary behind the church on Buford Road in North Chesterfield.
“What we wanted to be is a sacred space for people to come to,” Einsmann says. “One of the songs that we do in church on Sunday, it says, ‘You’re standing on holy ground,’ and to me, that’s what this place is. It just is. It is.”
The paths are a popular place to jog, walk and bike. Couples get married there. I’ve chatted with a paramedic who goes there to unwind after a 24-hour shift. Church member Harry Simmons once met a UPS driver who was taking his lunch in the gardens. “It’s just such a peaceful, beautiful place,” the driver said.
Some people nap, some people meditate, and quite a few people play Pokemon Go. (There are several Pokestops on the property, intended for just that purpose.) Einsmann doesn’t mind, “if it gets them out in the woods, in nature. You know, everybody’s doing their own thing.”
This is the magic of the Unity gardens: Many people consider the place to be their own. Hence, the appearance of the angels. Sometimes people ask first whether they can contribute a piece of statuary, or a plant. Often, they don’t. St. Francis recently assumed a post on the promenade; no one knows who put him there. But Unity will let him stay.
A St. Francis statue watches over a path in the meditation gardens.
The gardens feel surprisingly big. There’s a rainbow bridge garden, where the ashes of many beloved cats and dogs are buried; an outdoor classroom with wooden benches; a goldfish pond and a gazebo. Farther on is a bridge over a stony streambed, a porch swing and a children’s area with fairy-garden playthings. “It just keeps going and going,” Einsmann says. Go far enough, and you’ll find yourself on a short trail that comes out on Peck Road.
Unity — a Christian church, not Unitarian — is a sister church to Unity of Richmond, near Byrd Park. In the mid-1980s, there were so many congregants south of the river that they decided to form their own church, Unity South. Members rented space at Sabot at Stony Point as they saved money, and in 1996 purchased a rundown ranch home with 2 wooded acres on Buford Road.
“It was cheap,” says Rusty Rothrock, one of the original members.
“But it also had potential,” Einsmann says.
Thus began twin transformations: the house into a sanctuary, and the woods into a garden. Rothrock and fellow congregant Lisa Lambeth laid out an initial landscape plan, with a large open area in the center and a path that descended to the stream. A third Unity member, Gary Johnson, drove the bulldozer. Volunteers planted hundreds of small, gallon-sized azaleas and rhododendrons and carted away truckloads of trash. Thus, it began.
As the church expanded — outgrowing the ranch house, which in 2011 was replaced with an airy, Arts and Crafts-style church — so did the gardens. It wasn’t just about landscaping, Rothrock explains. The gardens became a place for congregants to hang out outside of Sunday services and a way to attract new members.
Wilma Langeveld, a volunteer in the meditation gardens and a member of Unity of Bon Air for 10 years, takes a break to enjoy her surroundings.
For 16 years they were overseen by master gardener Ayer Chamberlain, who died in 2015. Her favorite spot to sit was a bench by the streambed, with a sign that reads “Bon Ayer.” In a decade of working with her, Einsmann was inspired to become a master gardener herself, eventually taking over as coordinator.
The responsibility is daunting, she admits. “It’s huge. Huge. Huge!” Fortunately, she has a cadre of about 20 loyal volunteers who weed, mulch, haul, plant and water.
In 23 years, the little shrubs have grown into a great grove. The scraggly divisions of periwinkle and lily of the valley, contributed from members’ gardens, have spread into flowering carpets.
But the path down to the stream is badly eroded, the water bill hits $1,000 some years, and the church hasn’t had the resources to fix everything. Until now.
Last month, a man approached Rothrock. He and his family weren’t church members, but they had been coming to the gardens for two decades. He’d recently lost his wife, he said, and he wanted to contribute something to the gardens in her name.
Rothrock gave him the garden’s wish list, which totaled some $11,000, and invited him to pick an item. “He said, ‘We’ll do the whole thing.’ ”
Last week, heavy equipment came in to re-grade the paths. The church will be installing a well, adding erosion controls and perhaps installing a labyrinth. The gardens will be closed for a few weeks while the work is completed. In the spring, it will be glorious.
And who knows? By then, a few more angels might appear.
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