URBAN DREAMS
How a bench and a courtyard are transforming north Des Moines
Jay Cartwright comes to the bench for a moment of peace. He puts down his backpack and the other plastic bags he carries from place to place and stretches out a bit, joyful for a quiet place to tap out a quick round of his favorite car racing game on his phone. Out in the fresh air, he can drop the burdens of being between living situations, he says, and let go of the fear that someone will come by and tell him he’s not welcome — not wanted. Here, at this bench in the back of the Urban Dreams courtyard, everyone is welcome. This particular small piece of nature is a “sacred place,” both literally and figuratively. Sponsored by Nature Sacred, a foundation started by the Stoner family of Des Moines, this bench is one of a hundred across the country that seeks to bring nature forward in places where comfort is needed — places where the natural world is often obscured by asphalt and concrete.
“Nature out there is super important,” says Alden Stoner, CEO of Nature Sacred. “But there are so many people, whether they’re in a redlined neighborhood or in a hospital bed, they need nature where they are in order to have that healing.”
Nature Sacred brings that green space, however small, to where people “live, work, play and heal,” she says. In doing so, it is democratizing nature and making public the sort of meditative retreats and healing gardens that have long been cloistered away for the elite and the affluent.
And the foundation is now scaling its work at an impressive speed. In its first 20 years, Nature Sacred created 100 “sacred places,” says Stoner,
who has been CEO for almost four years. By 2025, leaders want to have an additional 100 in the pipeline — including another in Des Moines at the new Urban Dreams building — and they’re well ahead of schedule.
For Stoner, her vocation is more an avocation that happens to come with a salary. She’s passionate about nature, about its healing effects. She’s felt its magic when her life spiraled out of control, her post-college plans dashed by the burst of the dot-com bubble. It’s offered space for her grief when the babies in her womb, the ones so desperately wanted, miscarried.
And during COVID, as they were for so many, parklands were the first places to crack the protective layer she’d built around herself and her loved ones. Nature reawakened in many a sense of calm and peace in the midst of challenge. Our bodies adjusted. Breathing deepened. Heart slowed. Mind calmed.
Now, she sees green space as key to tackling the country’s current mental health crisis, one “the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”
“Mental health issues from day to day, and the level of depression and suicide that is amongst us, these green spaces have been proven to meaningfully reduce that,” Stoner says. “So is it feeding someone tonight? No.
“But is it feeding their soul tonight? Yes.”
As Stoner and Nature Sacred embark on their new push to double their sacred places in just two years, they’re embedding a question in the heart of their work:
How a courtyard and a bench transformed a patch of north Des Moines
Even with an early fall chill crisping the wind, more than a dozen people gathered at the Urban Dreams courtyard on a recent Monday afternoon, most huddled around the power outlets in the back.
Slightly fewer than in the summer, says Izaah Knox, executive director of the local nonprofit Urban Dreams, but a fairly regular amount for the spot, which has quickly become central to the area.
“It’s a staple in the community,” says
Qory King, 18, who worked for Urban Dreams and hosted its weekly Summer on Sixth block parties, one of the 20some events the group has had since the courtyard opened about a year ago. “If you live around here, you obviously know what this place is.”
“Once you enter this space, you just get hit with a whole bunch of positive energy,” he continues. “Everyone’s happy together and everyone’s having a good time and celebrating each other. It’s just a really good feeling overall.”
Knox was the brainchild behind the courtyard, which sits on top of what was Urban Dreams’ old headquarters, and he and his team pulse with excitement and pride when they talk about the changes they’ve seen in the corridor since breaking ground.
“Those that are marginalized; those that are unlike us in many ways; those that need help, whether that be economically, socially, physically, spiritually, mentally, all of those things, when they come here, all those things seem to kind of dissipate,” says Dwight Jackson, Urban Dreams’ associate executive director. “They don’t go away. Just for a moment, they’re kind of neutralized by this space.”
The courtyard, which was funded by many different partners, is marked by nooks and crannies that serve different populations.
Toward the street, a watering station complete with a dog-height spigot encourages walking and exercising in the neighborhood. The middle of the area houses permanent drums and xylophones, which are geared toward getting kids and families outside.
And in the back, the power outlets and ample seating have become vital to the local houseless population, who are looking for a safe place to rest.
“It’s busy all the time. People use it and they respect it,” Knox says. “There’s been no vandalism, no theft, nothing, since the space has been in use.”
“It’s pretty remarkable, especially because most of the people that hang out here get really bad raps,” Knox continues. “We had some calls today. A lot of people wish homeless people would just disappear out of our community, or people that don’t fit into the box of what they want their neighbors to look like would just disappear from the community.”
But providing a safe place for some of the community’s most vulnerable may be the park’s highest calling, Knox says, because in his eyes a truly “sacred place” is one that treats all with dignity and respect.
Next spring, Urban Dreams plans to install fruit trees to further support those who may be food insecure and use the park and the Nature Sacred bench.
“What’s really cool about partnering with Nature Sacred on this is this is what they want,” Knox says. “They want people no matter what, no matter any kind of status, socio-economic, racial, housing, whatever the status is they don’t care. They just want people to enjoy it and use it.
“And they want it to be in places where they typically don’t have something like this to enjoy.”
Indeed, embedded within Nature Sacred’s mission, Stoner says, is that members of each and every community inform what they want in their green space, how they hope it will be used and, most importantly, what is actually
to them.
In the Des Moines area, there are also Nature Sacred benches at the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines and the Brenton Arboretum, near Dallas Center. Each of the three Iowa “sacred places” are very different, she says, driven by the particular need of that locale.
When Stoner visited in September, she delighted in seeing the Urban Dreams courtyard almost constantly in use by people who seemed appreciative for a moment of calm.
“Often these sacred places become acupuncture points in the city,” Stoner adds, “where they can help transform the communities, the lives around the communities, and sometimes more.”
The legacy of Nature Sacred and Des Moines’ Stoner family
Over the more than 20 years Nature Sacred has been installing green spaces, it also has been funding research with top-flight institutions like the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and Cornell University, among many others, to prove the scientific correlation between health and nature.
And time and again that research shows that green spaces significantly lower symptoms of depression, stress and anxiety. No matter where the study takes place, for how long or when — nature always calms.
But Stoner already knew that; all she had to do was read the entries in the journals tucked into every Nature Sacred bench — an effort started with the very first bench at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation back in 1996.
wrote Melissa, a visitor to the Nature Sacred bench in Brenton Arboretum.
Continued on next page