The Living Earth Sanctuary

A Home for Earth Care, People Care

We’re building the Living Earth Sanctuary from the ground up as a home for learning, connection and community.

Here, children, families, and communities will discover and nurture their essential bond with our living earth and each other. As our elder, Ingwe, always said: “If you believe in the future, plant an oak.” The Sanctuary is our oak.

With your support, we can secure this land, build sustainable facilities, and “plant an oak” for future generations.

LES has found a way to be another world for kids, a sanctuary. Time moves differently at camp. Compassion, honor, respect for all ages – it is an expansive, intergenerational community. There is a clear set of values we practice.

Luca, Living Earth School camper turned staff member

Our Vision

We have a rare opportunity: to create the Living Earth Sanctuary on 287 acres of woods, meadows, rivers, and streams, just 20 minutes from downtown Charlottesville.

The Living Earth Sanctuary will be a thriving home for nature connection, mentoring, and community, creating a home so that current and future generations can experience the transformative power of our natural world.

We believe a deeper connection to nature inspires personal growth, fosters environmental care, and builds thriving communities. The Living Earth Sanctuary will foster this connection and keep the wisdom our ancestors knew accessible for generations to come.

Grow a Sanctuary

Secure land and build sustainable facilities that serve as the heart of Living Earth School, providing education, healing, and connection.

Deepen Our Impact

Increase capacity, broaden outreach, and remove barriers so more individuals and families can connect with nature.

Focus on place-based mentoring

With most participants in our programs for six years+, offering truly place-based mentoring deepens the relationship between our students and this living earth.

Expand Our Offerings

Launch new programs, including adult immersions, elder circles, after-school initiatives, rites of passage, and apprenticeships in carpentry, permaculture, and mentoring.

Frequently asked questions

The Living Earth Sanctuary is just 15 minutes from downtown Charlottesville off Red Hill Rd, on 287 acres of woods, meadows, rivers, and streams.

The Sanctuary is for everyone—children, families, adults, and elders. It will be a place where people of all ages can learn, grow, and connect with the natural world and each other.

Nearly 300 acres of diverse ecosystems—forest, water, and open fields—make it an ideal home for mentoring, gathering, and restoring our connection to the earth. Preserving this land ensures that its beauty and biodiversity are protected for future generations.

In addition to our current offerings, the Sanctuary will host new programs such as adult immersions, elder circles, after-school initiatives, rites of passage, and apprenticeships in carpentry, permaculture, and mentoring.

The Sanctuary gives Living Earth School a permanent home. It will expand our capacity, remove barriers to participation, and allow us to serve more people for generations to come. With most participants in our programs for six+ years, offering truly place-based mentoring deepens the relationship between our students and this living earth.

Research—and our lived experience—shows that time in nature reduces stress, builds resilience, strengthens relationships, and inspires care for the earth. When we love something, we care for it. The Sanctuary ensures that more people have the chance to experience these life-changing benefits AND bring them back to their communities and forward into their lives.

For us, a sanctuary is a place of refuge, belonging, and renewal—a home where people can reconnect with nature, find mentors, and carry forward a legacy of care for future generations.

Hub Knott, our co-founder and Executive Director, became inspired to found Living Earth School as he was sheltering inside a giant redwood tree during a storm. Recognizing that he was not the only being to seek shelter inside this beautiful tree, he realized his life’s work would be to create a ‘sanctuary’ for others to feel welcome, to feel safe and to have the opportunity to connect with others in their community, in nature. The Living Earth Sanctuary is that dream coming into being.

Yes. The Sanctuary will not only serve as a place for community and learning, but also as a preserved landscape where wildlife, forests, rivers, and meadows are cared for. Protecting this land is central to our vision of living in partnership with the earth.

Your support helps us secure the land, build sustainable facilities, and expand programming so more people can access nature connection experiences.

Yes! You can volunteer your time, share skills for building or events, or help spread the word. Every contribution strengthens this work.

Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on social media for updates, events, and opportunities to get involved.

In this time of ecological crisis, the work that Living Earth School has been engaged with for over twenty years is more crucial than ever. In these decades LES has fostered, for children, teens, adults and families, an ever-deepening relationship with nature. There is a mountain of research that indicates physical, emotional and mental health for children and adults alike, is supported by enjoying time in nature, unplugged and attuned to its natural, healthy rhythms.

  Sharifa Oppenheimer, Founding Teacher, Charlottesville Waldorf School; Author, Heaven on Earth: A handbook for Parents of Young Children

Get to know the Living Earth Sanctuary

We are taking time to get to know this land so we can be good stewards, even before building any infrastructure. We want to learn where the bobcats travel and the bears rest, where the turkeys nest and the deer forage. We are getting to know the beautiful rocks, gentle box turtles and fantastic fungi. We are tracing the paths of water and noticing the presence of special plants and trees.

LES is a rare place that has an elder community at camp and gives them a meaningful place to contribute. At LES, I feel truly seen, understood and valued. That means the world to me, because we are in a world where elders are often pushed aside. That is one of LES’s strengths – supporting each other. This is a place where so many seeds have blossomed in others’ lives.

Steven Snow Bear Taylor, Camp Elder

Your teams are so gifted at meeting kids where they are and offering new experiences. The balance of social/emotional with environmental, play-based exploration is such a gift.

Jill, parent of a student