The Memory Garden: Bringing Music to the Garden

Music is packed with meaning and there are many ways to bring music into the garden--and you don't necessarily need a sound system to do it.

Recently, while on a trip to Las Vegas, I visited the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden, which was built to memorialize the 58 people massacred and more than 500 individuals injured by a lone gunman who attacked while they were enjoying a concert at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on October 1, 2017. Hundreds of volunteers quickly came together to build the garden, planned by Jay Pleggenkuhle and Daniel Perez of Stonerose Landscapes, and the garden officially opened just four days after the shooting.

Because the garden is dedicated to those music lovers who lost their lives on that horrible day, there are lots of references to music throughout the garden. A platform is bordered with a wrought iron fence featuring musical notes. Individual memorials use signage to acknowledge the music connection. Wind chimes carry a tinkling of soft musical notes on every breeze.