Fruit trees stand abandoned in the USC Peace Garden as plants once maintained by volunteers had died. A huge loss for former volunteer Audrey Joachim was the garden’s oldest resident, Sunshine the cat, losing its home. Sunshine, along with the other cats who called the garden home, is gone after being adopted following the garden’s closure. Like the cats, the Peace Garden itself is facing relocation.

In May, USC told volunteers the beloved Peace Garden would be relocated after the land it sat on was scheduled for sale in June. Despite student and community pressure, USC pushed forward with the sale. 

On Sept. 11, USC’s Office of Sustainability shared a survey on Instagram and in its virtual newsletter that asked for student and community opinions on two potential new locations for the Peace Garden.

According to the survey, the two locations being considered are Kerckhoff Hall lawn, which is a 17-minute walk from campus and roughly 4,500 square feet, and the Jefferson Building’s quad, which is on campus but only around 1,500 square feet.

Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple said that choosing the two locations came down to the sites that met both the Office of Sustainability’s and the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy’s criteria. 

“We had to go through a bunch of information gathering to understand,” Dalrymple said. “Does USC own this space, or is it owned by the city or somebody else? Is there a sewer main down the middle of it?”

Julie McLaughlin Gray, associate chair for academic, faculty and student affairs at Chan, said that both locations had positive qualities. 

“We were taking inventory of what were all the activities that took place in the Peace Garden that people seem to really value and want to continue, and what would that look like, potentially, in a new space? What would we need?” Gray said.

Although Dalrymple and Gray said that these locations would allow the garden’s impact to continue, some Peace Garden student volunteers, who ran the garden before its relocation, said they aren’t as sure.

Jacob Robinson, a senior majoring in urban studies, is a former volunteer at the Peace Garden and the SC Garden Club’s operations lead. He had been volunteering at the garden since it opened during his freshman year and said he had witnessed firsthand the effect the garden has had on the community.

“It was a really important spot where you had people from all walks of life, from the University as well as our neighbors, coming together to share the space,” Robinson said. 

Sophia Hammerle, a Peace Garden volunteer and USC alum, has campaigned against the garden’s relocation since May. She said the Peace Garden has slowly bridged the gap between USC and the local community.

“Even if it’s moved to an off-campus location like Kerckhoff Hall, we still have to rebuild that trust that took so long to establish with community members,” Hammerle said.

Robinson said the two proposed locations would not allow the Peace Garden to have the same impact on the local community.

The Jefferson Building quad, which is on campus, may make it harder for both students and community members to access the garden, according to Robinson. He said he was excited about the possibility that Kerckhoff Hall could become the Peace Garden’s new home. 

Hammerle said she is concerned that Kerckhoff Hall is surrounded by USC student housing and is in a heavily-surveilled area, which she said may discourage local residents from visiting. 

Robinson and Hammerle both said a newly-relocated Peace Garden could not be a direct replacement of the original. 

“Any garden that is made at either of those locations is not the Peace Garden,” Hammerle said. “It might be a new garden and it might have an important role in people’s lives moving forward, but calling it the same thing as the Peace Garden really erases this history.” 

The survey, which was released Sept. 11, gave students and community members a place to share their thoughts and be involved in the future of the Peace Garden. Hammerle said the move glosses over the lack of communication between USC and the student volunteers.

“My perspective on the current survey, that they’re doing about the current relocation, is that it’s just this cover-up for the fact that they decided to close and sell the garden without communicating with students or the interns who actually worked at the garden,” Hammerle said.

Hammerle also said she hoped the Peace Garden could stay where it was, saying that there were no signs of the sale being completed. According to Zillow, the lot remains on sale as of publication. She described the house on the lot as “pretty old and in poor shape” and said she does not think anyone is jumping at a chance to buy the property. 

Dalrymple said they did not know whether the land was still for sale, but said that the Peace Garden staying in its former location “wasn’t a possibility.”

Gray and Dalrymple said several times throughout the interview that they wanted to work with students on the new garden. However, they did not offer specifics as to what this would look like, apart from taking into account the results from the survey. 

For now, the future of the Peace Garden rests in the hands of the Office of Sustainability and Chan, but Hammerle said she is going to continue to fight alongside other Peace Garden volunteers for the garden to stay in its original location. 

“There’s still hope among those who spent time there that the land won’t be sold,” Hammerle said. “That USC leadership will come around and realize that this is really unfair to their students, that they can still choose to listen to our petition and our original requests and reinstate the garden at its current location.”