James H. Berry Park Bentonville, AR / 2023

James H. Berry Park is conceived as a renewed civic landscape—one that honors the complexity of Arkansas history while creating a welcoming, modern public space for the community. Ground Control worked with Benton County Historic Society, United Daughters of the Confederacy and local stakeholders in a two-year site selection and design process to relocate the monument from the Town Square to a new park adjacent to Bentonville Cemetery. Ground Control approached the redesign with the belief that public parks can simultaneously acknowledge the past and frame a more inclusive future. Nowhere is that dual responsibility more present than in the recontextualization of Bentonville’s Confederate monument.

Rather than erasing the monument, the design strategically relocates it within an interpretive setting that reshapes how visitors encounter the object. Planting beds encircle the statue and create areas for rest and contemplation. This move de-emphasizes the monument and presents it as a historical artifact within a broader narrative framework.

A series of low, curved benches define the perimeter and create a physical and symbolic threshold. Interpretive signage, developed with local historians and community stakeholders, contextualizes the monument within the full history of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the long arc of civic memory in Arkansas. The language emphasizes transparency over glorification, framing the statue not as an active emblem but as a remnant whose meaning is understood through honest, contemporary interpretation.

Surrounding this interpretive zone, Ground Control introduced a more vibrant and democratic park structure: interpretive totems, comfortable curved benches under a bosque of native shade trees for comfort and respite. In this arrangement, the life of the park is centered on community activity—not on the monument.

By shifting the monument’s spatial prominence and recontextualizing it with diverse narrative and critical interpretation, the design preserves history while reframing it. The result is a park where the past is neither erased nor uncritically celebrated, but instead woven into an environment that reflects modern civic values, community use patterns, and a deeper, more complete understanding of Arkansas’s shared history.

Client I Benton County Historical Society