Church Landscapes, Part 4

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How can church landscapes better match the church’s mission and attitudes towards God’s Creation, without consuming excessive time and treasure? Here are some ideas, but each church will be different due to the physical site, the church’s mission, its resources, and other variables. These ideas are just a starting point. Creativity can run far with them and uncover other design concepts that fit different situations. 

The sequence of spaces from the sidewalk or parking lot to the front door can add meaning to the experience of arriving for worship. 

• Design the entry to suggest reverence or to draw people into worship.
• Use the entry to bring people together before services and to send them out afterwards. 
• Solomon's Temple was a series of territorial steps, from the Court of the Gentiles to the Holy of Holies. Can we suggest a similar progression through the site and into the building? 

The landscape can reflect the glory of God through the beauty of His creative acts. We can weave created features into the landscape to show the glory of what God has done around us. 

• Everybody loves flowers, butterflies, and birds. We can use profusely flowering plants that the local birds and bees love to draw them into our view. Plus, that's good for them, too. 
• Not every shrub must be pruned and manicured into little globes or boxes. Most plants, left on their own, grow into shapes and forms that we recognize as normal and proper. The trick, sometimes, is as simple as making sure that the plant selections are suited to the situation. For instance, don't put a large shrub directly in front of a low window ... unless you want to look out that window at that shrub.
• Don't leave out the "hardscape": paving, fencing, railings, structures, and so on. Imagine stone pavers instead of concrete sidewalks. Let moss grow on brick walls. Weave patterns into pavement. Scrollwork in wrought iron fencing can be quite meaningful. 

The layout can include spaces that enrich church events and activities. 

• Imagine children or adults having Sunday School in an outdoor classroom. 
• Hold meetings and services – or even weddings – in an outdoor chapel or amphitheater. 
• Have a fire pit for fall events and cookouts and youth groups. 
• Have picnics in and around a pavilion, perhaps with a grill. 

Enjoy these bodies that God gave us through play and sports.

• Kids love playgrounds. Parents love their kids. Welcome the neighbors to play with you. Chick-fil-A is very intentional about putting their play structures at the front of the building, to remind parents and kids that THIS is the place they want to be. Could a church do something similar? 
• Picnic areas and playgrounds can be useful whenever there is sunlight. And with some lighting, even after dark. 
• Where there is enough flat ground, build ballfields and invite the community in. Maybe partner with the locality to host rec league games. 
• With less flat ground, weave sports courts like basketball, tennis, and pickleball into the parking lot or on their own pads.
• Find out what the neighborhood would value, and provide it. 

We can provide spaces for people to go deeper in their faith and thinking: 

• Meditation gardens come in many different shapes and sizes: a small formal courtyard with statuary or a fountain, a few plants in a little orphaned cubbyhole between two buildings, a labyrinth with spiraled paving, a couple benches looking out at a distant vista ...
• A columbarium or memorial garden can be deeply meaningful, and people often will give targeted gifts to build them and improve them. 
• Odd little nooks and crannies can be good opportunities for special places, but few churches take advantage of them.
• “Bible gardens” use plants mentioned in the Bible. This can be one approach to add special meaning to a space. 

Several church buildings in the study enclosed spaces but did nothing with those spaces. Picture a building with a U-shaped footprint, with nothing but grass inside the U. 

Spaces like these can become courtyards that can be very special in the life of the church. They need not be elaborate, but they usually should not be too simple. Enough pavement for groups to gather, plus a few benches or seating walls, and a mix of evergreen shrubs and flowering perennials could become "the" place to be. 

Speak to passersby and welcome the community. 

• Have walkways from public roads and sidewalks to the main entrances, and make sure that they are easily legible and accessible. 
• Reserve open space for community activities like festivals. 
• Set benches where passersby will be comfortable sitting. Speak to them with meaningful features nearby: a small statue, a scripture engraved in a stone, a mural ...
• Place friendly features like playgrounds in plain sight and make it obvious that anybody may use them.  

Any site can have those odd little areas that just don't work. 

• Erosion can happen wherever water concentrates, especially during and after storms. Selecting the right tools and practices for remediation can improve how the grounds look and function. 
• Does water pond and puddle in the wrong places, like right in front of a door? That can take a little grading or a drain line. 
• Undermanaged turf can get overrun with weeds. Many weeds can be quite aggressive. The problem might be mostly about the soil, water, or nutrition, and sometimes the best solution is to replace the turf with something that doesn't need so much attention. 
• Undermanaged planting beds also can get overrun with weeds, and shrubs can get gangly. Weeding and mulching can have dramatic benefits. Pruning the shrubs might not look so good at first, but can turn around in a few months. Sometimes, the shrubs are just not the right ones for the setting and will never not be a problem, so they should be replaced. 
• Paths worn in the grass? Someone is asking for a walkway. 

Not everything about a modern building is going to be beautiful. 

• Put dumpsters and trash cans in enclosures. Wood, stone, brick, whatever: as long as it coordinates with the other structures and looks better than the dumpsters and trash cans. 
• Hide the HVAC and other mechanical units behind shrubs or architectural screening. 
• Ditto for service yards, loading docks, and other unsightly spaces. 
• Maintain storage buildings. Paint them, replace them, or hide them behind plantings. 

We all have to live within a budget. Churches are no exception. Any landscape design must be constrained within the church’s resources. We must take a careful, realistic look at volunteers and budgets to assure that the new plan will work well over time. 

• Any of these suggestions will cost money to plan, buy, build, or install. 
• Any of these suggestions will cost money and time to manage for as long as they endure. 
• Some suggestions, like letting turf revert to a wildflower meadow, could actually save money and time by reducing the maintenance burden. 
• Volunteers have only so much time, energy, and knowledge. What they cannot keep up with could become the next problem. 

So how do we get there? 

Plus, get ready for a bonus thought.