Celebration Garden and Wellness Park

Good architecture doesn’t always have four walls. The Celebration Garden and Wellness Park on the ACHE campus at Chaffee Crossing is an eight-acre outdoor environment designed around the idea that landscape itself can be a health resource — for students, faculty, and the broader Fort Smith community alike.

The park was made possible through a grant of more than $500,000 from The Degen Foundation, whose name is honored in the site’s central pavilion — a gathering place for outdoor wellness activities, lectures, ceremonies, and celebration. The pavilion also serves as a place of quiet remembrance for ACHE’s anatomical donors, whose contributions to medical education are honored within the park’s design.

The program includes a walking trail, a children’s play area, a fountain, and a restroom facility. At the heart of the park sits a ponder labyrinth — its path surfaced in decomposed granite and bordered by a low hedgerow of Yaupon hollies — offering a contemplative counterpoint to the more active elements of the site.

It has become one of the most photographed locations in the River Valley. Families, graduating classes, and wedding parties regularly seek it out as a backdrop, which says something no design award can: the community has genuinely claimed it as their own.