Psychology senior Tessa Adkins goes to Mathews Garden every day.

Twice a week, she comes to the patch of organic soil, filled to the brim with more than 350 different species of plants, to weed and to tear up any invasive species. On days she does not work there, she goes to the garden anyway to read, clear her mind and just sit.

Adkins graduates in May and said the garden — an inconspicuous patch of greenery on South Limestone surrounded by a white-painted wooden fence — is the thing she’ll miss most about her time at UK.

Professors, graduate students and other people across campus have other reasons why they do not want the university to follow through with a proposal that would tear down Mathews Garden to make room for a law school renovation.

UK spokesman Jay Blanton said no decisions have been made as to the fate of the garden. The College of Law is still in preliminary stages of designing the renovation.

Mathews Garden, created in about 1900 by a UK horticulture and botany professor, is possibly the most diverse in Kentucky. Professors from many different studies including botany, agriculture and English use the half-acre as a classroom that can be found nowhere else on campus or in the state.

“It would be kind of silly to consider it just real estate,” Adkins said. “This is our history. There’s a depth to the history here that’s not present in a brand new building.”

The educational value of the garden is extensive, and should be reason enough for UK to keep it around, but if that does not convince administrators, Adkins’ story should.

In a university of more than 30,000 students and enough student organizations to make one’s head spin, finding a place on campus to call your own can be tough.

But Adkins found her place in Mathews Garden, and is training biology and anthropology sophomore Hayley-Ann Vasco to take her place.

When Vasco graduates, another student will follow her, and so on.

Mathews Garden is not just a classroom and not just a patch of green space, it is a piece of UK that allows students to find purpose and sanctuary in a bustling and sometimes overwhelming campus.

Not many students will spend as much time in the garden as Vasco or Adkins, but the half-acre — which is beautiful this time of year, when the Virginia Bluebells, Wood Poppies and Redbuds are blooming — is somewhere other students can go to find peace of mind.

If UK decides to tear down Mathews Garden, administrators should understand they are not just getting rid of a plot of green space and a classroom, they are ridding two current students (and countless future ones) of a place where they feel at home on campus.  

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