Forest Sanctuary — the red-brick chapel in Forest, Ohio, with its yard sign reading Good for Someone Else

A place to come back to the rhythm of good things

Forest Sanctuary is an old country chapel in Forest, Ohio, USA, brought back to life as a garden, a quiet room, and a gathering place. For two years now, neighbors have been planting, singing, eating, and making things here together — and you're welcome to join us.

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Evening on the Forest Sanctuary property — a neighbor by the sunflowers at dusk, with the chapel behind

Evening on the property

The chapel and the garden at dusk — the quiet rhythm we keep here. Come fall into it for an evening, a weekend, or a season.

A glimpse of the garden

The garden grows three ways at once. Permaculture shows us how to design with nature — earth care, people care, fair share. Hugelkultur builds fertility from buried wood, mound beds that hold water and feed themselves. And the Vedic cycles keep us in rhythm with the sky — planting, tending, and harvesting by the chart and the seasons.

Music & quiet

Music & quiet

Evening quiet and singing in the old chapel

The chapel still has its old pipe organ and its stained glass. Every evening at seven we sit together in the quiet for a little while. Other nights there's singing — out loud, for the joy of it, never a performance. Groups are welcome to use the room for their own gatherings, given freely.

Music & quiet
Making and mending, together

Making and mending, together

The oldest skills, practiced and shared

The oldest skills are the homemaking ones: cooking, growing, putting food by, painting, quilting, woodwork, fixing what's broken. We practice them here and pass them around — garden mornings, shared meals, workdays, and afternoons in the art studio. Start right where you are, with what you already have.

The domestic arts
Learning stays

Learning stays

Step into the rhythm of garden, quiet, and shared work

Sometimes a person just needs to step out of the rush. Come fall into the everyday cadence of garden, quiet, and shared work — for a day, a weekend, a week, or a season — then carry a little of that calm home. We host introductory Saturdays, weekends, weeklong stays, and monthlong caretaker residencies, year round.

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Garden

Garden

Twelve beds laid out after the southern Indian jyotish chart — heirloom food and medicine, freely given and shared.

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Music

Music

Singing, the pipe organ, and evening quiet in the old chapel.

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Sanctuary

Sanctuary

An old country chapel brought back to life as a quiet room and a gathering place.

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The invitation

You're not the only one wanting something quieter and truer. You're welcome here — not because you earned it, but because good things belong to everyone. You're right on time.

Forest Sanctuary, Year One — Domestic Arts

This is mine, that is his — so think the small-minded. To the large of heart, the whole world is one family.

Maha Upanishad (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam)

The whole library →

Get the monthly letter

A planting calendar and a few quiet notes, once a month. No noise.

The Whole Seed Catalog 2026 — Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

The seed images shown throughout this site are from the 2025 Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog. We buy our seeds there and recommend them — but the seeds are not provided by their courtesy. Please order your own from rareseeds.com.

Get Your Seeds Here

Anything here about plants as old garden remedies is shared for learning and reflection, not as medical advice.