Arts & Entertainment Community

Idea for Garden of Peace concerts sprouted from a tiny seed

Posted on August 20th, 2026 By: Charlee Glock-Jackson

One of the gardens featured in this summer’s Gig Harbor Garden Tour hosts a series of concerts that begins Saturday, Aug. 22.

Called “Garden of Peace Sessions,” the performances showcase nationally recognized musicians sharing their musical gifts in the garden owned by Zach and Rebekah Blue.

The sessions are based in part on the idea that music has the power to inspire and to heal. One of the Blues’ mottos is “connect, heal, release,” and it became a mantra emulating the solace the garden provided for them during a difficult time.

The Blues see their garden as a place to “Connect, Heal, Release.”

The words adorn an old bus stop building at the entrance to their garden. Tall evergreens, ferns, mosses and dozens of Japanese maples surround the building on the Peacock Hill property the Blues call home.

This is not a garden in the sense that vegetables grow there. It’s more a “Garden-of-Eden” kind of place. It’s their Garden of Peace.

Life is like a song

The Garden of Peace Sessions grew out of a desire to bring together music, nature, presence and connection, and the belief that “life is like a song,” Zach Blue said. Much like music, life moves through periods of hectic, exuberant activity and crescendos, then slows to an unhurried, more relaxed pace. Soothing.

“We spend so much of our lives rushing toward the next thing. But think about how we experience a song: We can lose ourselves in music. We feel it, each note and each pause. To me, that’s presence. And that’s how we try to move through life, too.”

The Blues have been interested in the concept of “creativity,” he added. “I think creativity is like a partnership between being open enough to receive an idea, and then being willing to do the work to make it happen, to bring it into being. It’s a good way to describe how the Garden of Peace Sessions came together.”

That the garden was the site of the Blues’ wedding a few years ago makes the place all the more meaningful.

Zach and Rebekah Blue after being married at their Peacock Hill property.

The performers

The sessions kick off Saturday with a performance by Gig Harbor pianist and composer Elijah Bossenbroek.

Bossenbroek’s love of music – especially the piano – began when he was just six years old. His compositions don’t fall into a specific genre or category. They feel more like stream-of-consciousness offerings that come from someplace deep inside. As his website notes, “where words fail, music speaks.”

Sharing the love of music

Zach said he and Rebekah “listen to a lot of music.” When the idea for the Garden of Peace Sessions sprouted, the couple began looking for local and regional artists “who feel to us like they would really resonate in the garden with music that feels like it belongs in the garden under the trees.”

Those guidelines resulted in booking performers from as far away as Virginia, though most live in the Puget Sound area.

Elijah Bossenbroek

Here’s the lineup of artists set to perform Garden of Peace concerts. Each session began at 6:30 p.m.:

Saturday, Aug. 22: Elijah Bossenbrock, original piano compositions
Saturday, Aug. 29: Yasmin Williams, a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist and one of NPR Music’s Breakthrough Artists of 2021.
Saturday, Sept. 5: Tomo Nakayama, a Japanese-born, Seattle-based synth artist/vocalist. Seattle radio station KEXP named his album “Ocean” one of the Top 100 of 2025.
Saturday, Sept. 12: Noah Gundersen, an Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter who crafts songs that linger long after the final note fades.
Saturday, Sept. 19: Marisa Anderson, whom the New Yorker magazine called “one of the most distinctive guitar players of her generation.”

More information

Every Garden of Peace session lasts approximately one hour, providing an intimate experience in a beautiful outdoor setting. Attendance is limited to about 50 people for each concert, and tickets sell out quickly. Each session is filmed for later viewing on the Life is Like a Song website.

Tickets to most of the Garden of Peace concerts cost $25. Buy them here.