'A place of rejuvenation': Marietta 911 call center garden reopened and repurposed

Zach Edmondson, Marietta Daily Journal, Ga.
·2 min read

Apr. 14—MARIETTA — This week, the garden inside the county's 911 call center was reopened for dispatchers, operators and other call center employees as a place of restoration.

The Cobb County Department of Emergency Communications Restoration Garden is now a place for call center employees to go and relieve stress, said Leighann Schultz, a communications training officer at the call center who cut the ribbon to open the new garden.

Once employees enter the garden, they are surrounded by Japanese Maple trees, a rock garden, bushes, flowers and benches with a pathway that runs through it all. The environment is a stark contrast to the typical daily environment of a call center employee.

The garden was originally created as a memorial for fallen officers and K-9 police dogs when officers and call center employees shared the building. Last year, the Cobb Police Department moved to its new headquarters, the former LGE Community Credit Union's building at 430 Commerce Park Drive in Marietta, and the memorial went with them.

Schultz, a member of the Growth, Restoration, Oneness and Wellness committee, a group of Cobb 911 operators who will use and maintain the garden, wants it to be a getaway for herself and her coworkers.

"We wanted it to be a place of restoration, like a Zen kind of a place to come and just chill and relax," she said. "It has transitioned from a place of reverence to a place of rejuvenation. (My coworkers) can just come here after the bad calls, or if they need to step away from the floor...and kind of forget that they're at work."

After officers and the memorial were relocated, Sherry King, the restoration garden's project manager, said, the garden wasn't being maintained as well anymore, so the idea for a repurposed garden was born.

"(Officers) left this empty garden and it did what gardens do, it grew," she said. "So, we decided...to turn this into a restoration garden for the 911 employees."

According to King, over 50 local businesses donated money to the project after she introduced it at Cobb business association meetings and over 30 volunteers from the community came out to help restore the garden.