MOSCOW, Idaho — "We really wanted to make things special here," said Jade Fredericks, an architecture student at the University of Idaho, as she looks over the nearly completed Vandal Healing Garden and Memorial, "Choose things that people could really tie back into their family members or loved ones that they've lost.”
An official dedication ceremony to unveil the Vandal Healing Garden and Memorial will be held on Wednesday, August 21 at the University of Idaho campus in Moscow. The garden is located on MacLean Field and the ceremony will be open to the public.
The garden was built by students from the College of Art and Architecture and is dedicated to honor the memories of the four students killed in November 2022, inside their off-campus home as well as all students who died before making it to graduation.
The architecture students began planning and designing the garden in the fall of 2023 and have since put hours of hard work into building the garden.
"When I come back in 20 years, I hope to see a thriving garden, a happy garden, a colorful garden. I hope to see people in it,” said Fredericks, who has been working on the garden project since early 2023.
A memorial sculpture within the garden will specifically honor Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogen, the students killed in November 2022.
“We're really trying to send this message of joy and life and hope throughout the entire garden,” said Quinn Anderson, another U of I architecture student working on the project. “We've lost those students, we really want the space to carry on the qualities of them that made them who they were.”
The students have spent nearly every day designing and building every aspect of the garden. The work started with a design charrette when the victim's family members, the U of I student community, along with staff and the Moscow community were invited to give their perspectives on what a memorial includes.
“When they first started thinking about joining in the class, and we're going to create this garden and memorial, what is that thing going to be? Was the first question they asked themselves," Scott Lawrence, a professor of architecture at U of I, said. "We learned pretty quickly that we couldn't answer that until we asked a lot of other people a lot of questions.”
They took that feedback back to the classroom, where they spent the 2023 fall and 2024 spring semesters planning the garden. The class settled on a design to encapsulate all students who were lost before graduation with a special memorial to highlight the four students killed.
The series of hundreds of hand-patinated panels are enclosed on a steel structure. Through a skylight, each panel captures light and reflects its own color, picked to symbolize one of the four students.
"The idea is that there'll be a series of panels that are facing their nameplate that are a different color that's dedicated to them," Fredericks said.
The students did all the necessary construction for the garden, including pouring concrete, welding the memorial sculpture, picking and planting trees and flower bushes by hand.
On top of that, there are more than 1,000 hand-cut and sanded wooden cubbies. Those will serve as an interactive section of the memorial. Fredericks explained people visiting the garden will be able to leave their personal notes in times of vandal need, she said that work on the cubbies began before they broke ground on the garden.
It's a level of commitment that could only come from students personally impacted by the tragedy in their community.
The students worked every single day, for hours a day for the last year and a half to complete the garden. They moved to construction on the garden, working into the heat of the summer. Fredericks said they would come in early in the morning, work for hours, take lunch during the heat of the day, then return and work into the night.
“The garden is an incredible reflection of our students and how much they have cared about this project,” Dean of Student Blaine Eckles said. “It is a legacy that will outlast any of our time here. This student-led project shows the dedication, care and resilience of our student body. It truly showcases what it means to be a Vandal and honors our lost Vandals in a beautiful manner.”
Reflecting on the project, Professor Lawrence said he'd never seen such dedication from a class of students.
“It's a big sacrifice to take on a project like this,” Lawrence said. "We'll have, hopefully, projects that have impacts on the community, and they have positive things, but never one where we're holding the community's heart in our hands the way we have on this project."
Many of the students didn't go home for the summer, opting to stay and work on the construction of the garden.
“I'm most grateful for these students, they are, yeah, they're special," Lawrence said. "When they're exhausted, they come in when they don't want to come in, they pick themselves up after failures, they pick themselves up after setbacks, and they do it all for free. That's pretty special. That's all, yeah, no. I mean, I love them. I love these students."
For students like Fredericks, this is an experience that they will hold with them throughout their careers.
"I didn't think I could work this hard and, like, push through so much," Fredericks said. " “I'm excited for this to help everyone else. It's the way it helped me, and I know it helps a lot of other people too.”