Tom Stoner, president of TKF Foundation, an Annapolis nonprofit that has co-founded more than 100 urban gardens since 1998, likely would echo singer Joni Mitchell’s sentiment that “we are stardust, we are golden; and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
“The TKF Foundation is about 10 years old,” Stoner, a former Chesapeake Bay Foundation chairman, said, “and what we’ve been doing for these 10 years is partnering with organizations to create what we call opens spaces and sacred places — places where we use nature to unify people and bring wholeness to them.”
Inspired by a visit to a London park in 1995 where bench jottings indicated it was a refuge during the Battle of Britain, Stoner and his wife, Kitty, who is vice president of the foundation, decided to import the sacred space-cum-journaling idea to American cities.
The four-employee, $600,000-a-year foundation trolls for partners, called “firesouls” — the “F” in the “TKF” name — and reviews applications from interested groups to realize its vision of “a deeper human experience by supporting the creation of public greenspace that offers a temporary place of sanctuary, encourages reflection, provides solace and engenders peace.”
Characteristic of a TKF Foundation park is its distinctive meditation bench — made by inmates of the Maryland Department of Corrections of 100-year-old pickle barrel wood — and waterproof journal, which allows visitors to record their reflections for others’ edification.
“We have thousands of these writings,” Stoner said, adding that a book on the foundation’s formation and work, called “Open Spaces, Sacred Places,” has been written.
“The park is right in line with our mission,” Erin Hood, development director of Greenmount Avenue’s Community Mediation Program, said of a $130,000 TKF Foundation park under construction there. “Our mission is to create a more peaceful community in Baltimore, a place where either staff or community members can go and reflect, and where training sessions can be held.”
Of the 30 or so parks TKF Foundation has co-created in the Baltimore area — with partners like Baltimore Clayworks, the Children’s Peace Center and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center — design types include labyrinths, healing and restorative gardens, community parks, prison gardens and memorial and contemplative spaces.
“It’s fantastic; we’re very pleased,” William Jewell, volunteer activities coordinator for Maryland’s Western Correctional Institution, said of the TKF Foundation-funded garden. “That we know of, we’re the only Maryland prison that has a meditation garden.”
