Sisters of Bon Secours sells some of its Howard County land to conservation easement

A cross-shaped building stands atop a hillside near Marriottsville in Howard County, surrounded by fields, forests and a large koi pond. With a few other buildings, the small campus serves as the headquarters and nature retreat for the Sisters of Bon Secours USA.

The once-large sisterhood owns 313 acres of land off Marriottsville Road, abutting Patapsco Valley State Park. As their numbers dwindle, the sisters want their headquarters land to remain a haven for wildlife and human beings for decades to come, so they negotiated a conservation easement with the Howard County Conservancy to protect at least 32 acres in perpetuity.

“One of the things we’ve been looking at is what we need to do now to be ready 10 years from now,” said Sister Elaine Davia, the area leader for the Sisters of Bon Secours USA. “If things change in society or in our community, how do we want the land to be kept.”

An international Roman Catholic congregation, the Sisters of Bon Secours’ mission is to care for the ill and dying. They live by the motto, “Good help to those in need.”

Founded in 1824 in France, the sisters came to America, specifically Baltimore, in 1881, where they established a health care ministry. In 1919, the sisters opened their first hospital in Baltimore.

They subsequently opened others in multiple states before stepping back from hospital ownership about eight years ago. The order now serves as spiritual advisors to the hospitals it once owned.

The West Baltimore hospital, which struggled because it served so many uninsured patients, was sold in 2019 to Lifebridge Health. It now operates as Grace Medical Center.

Meanwhile, the numbers of nuns in Bon Secours continued to shrink. Today, most of the sisters live in Peru, with only 14 in the U.S. — 11 in Howard County, two in Baltimore and one in Richmond, Virginia.

While their work is based in caring for the sick, the sisters also have a deep admiration for, and calling to, nature.

Their mission-focused statement is rooted in caring for all life, including nature and animals. It reads: “We, Women of Healing, commit ourselves to defend and care for all of creation; to cry out with others against injustice and all that diminishes life on earth.”

The order purchased the Marriottsville property in 1962 to build a provincial house to serve as its administrative headquarters, an infirmary for the sisters, and as a novitiate, where sisters in their trial period would live and study.

Over the years, the property’s name and services changed, finally settling on Bon Secours Retreat & Conference Center.

The sisters have hosted groups of nature lovers, Davia said, including one in which attendees with cancer visited the center to find peace in nature.

“I think it’s very healing to walk in beautiful natural places,” Davia said. “So this is a way to have a place to come for quiet and stillness and hearing birds and all that.”

For Sister Fran Gorsuch, the vocation director and justice promoter for the Sisters of Bon Secours, the importance of preserving the property is to provide a long-lasting sanctuary for plants and animals.

“We’ve taken over their land as if we have a right to it. I mean, as if somehow they’re second- and third-class citizens, and we’re the ones who determine what happens to everything,” Gorsuch said. “I’m trying to deepen that consciousness in myself and to do all I can to help protect the land that we have, because so much of life depends on it.”

The Howard County Conservancy, located about five minutes away on Old Frederick Road, received a $1.4 million grant from the county government to evaluate properties in the county and ultimately purchased the easement from the sisters.

“The fact that we are really neighbors as well has been a really lovely thing,” said Meg Boyd, the conservancy’s executive director.

The conservancy purchased the easement from the order for $1.3 million. Under such agreements, the owner keeps the property but agrees to limit its development for compensation.

The new easement adjoins two existing protected properties, according to a county news release, noting that it contributes to Howard County Executive Calvin Ball’s goal of establishing 50% tree canopy over the county by 2030.

It’s the fourth easement deal completed under Ball’s term, totaling 112 acres. Others include 10 acres at Watermont Swim Club in Elkridge, 8 acres at North St. Johns Swim and Tennis Club in Ellicott City and 62 acres behind the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Elkridge.

Boyd said the conservancy and Bon Secours have “come together under this shared belief in preservation, the importance of the environment and leaving a sort of legacy for the community.”

Boyd is grateful that the easement protects the forested portion of the Bon Secours property. Preserving trees that are at least 100 years old, if not older, Boyd said, is leaps and bounds better than planting new trees.

For now, the partnership only protects roughly 10% of the order’s property. The conservancy and the sisters want to work together to preserve more land.

The sisters hope one day to have a large chunk — nearly 100 acres — become part of Patapsco Valley State Park. The park’s Woodstock Area borders the property.

It would be a natural fit, Davia said, because people already walk the land as if it’s part of the park.