By Carolyn Barnes

Town Crier Correspondent

Longtime resident Don Wuertley passed away two years ago, but the memories of his generosity and kindness are more vibrant than ever at Pilgrim Haven Retirement Community on Pine Lane in Los Altos. Thanks to an unprecedented outpouring of enthusiasm for gardening, many people have participated in creating the Don Wuertley Memorial Garden, near Memorial Hall on the Pilgrim Haven campus.

The idea for a memorial garden sprouted with Wuertley’s daughter, Karen Fowler of Los Altos.

“My dad loved getting his hands in dirt; it just seemed right to start a memorial fund for that purpose,” she said. “This has been a real community effort.”

Chief administrator Tara McGuinness had long known of Wuertley’s volunteer activities at Pilgrim Haven, which included helping people with their private gardening plots, delivering mail to residents unable to get to their mail boxes, visiting residents in the skilled nursing facility and generally providing a ray of sunshine wherever it was needed.

“It seems he helped everybody in some way,” resident Betty Cherry said. As the resident-designer of the new garden, with resident Roger Cairns, Cherry had been a life-long gardener in Pennsylvania before moving to Pilgrim Haven three years ago.

McGuinness thought the memorial garden was a great idea and suggested that Cherry and Cairns come up with a new landscape plan for a dull, but centrally located garden area. Little did she know the expertise which would blossom forth. Within a short time, Cherry conceived the plan for a mounded, French intensive gardening-style plot and Cairns, a former project manager for the Stanford University Planning Office, prepared a detailed drawing. The two residents visited botanical gardens throughout the Bay Area, with a special focus in native plants, and presented it to the flabbergasted administrator.

“We are trying to have an emphasis on native plants, plants that are drought-tolerant, and plants to attract hummingbirds and butterflies,” Cherry said.

“Tara was pleasantly overwhelmed,” Cairns said of their presentation of the garden plan.

Soon the Gachina Landscape Management Company, which oversees Pilgrim Haven’s grounds, chipped in with a special soil mix, mounding, and a drip irrigation system; McGuinness brought succulents and daisies from her own garden; Pilgrim Haven contributed plants and supplies; and the Wuertley family matched residents’ contributions.

A handsome memorial plaque in the center of the garden reads: In loving memory of Donald F. Wuertley: Husband, Father, Grandfather, Gardener, Friend.” Daisy Wuertley, Donald’s widow, a resident in the skilled nursing facility, greatly enjoys visiting the garden almost every day with her daughter Karen or her other daughter, Gaye Kelly of Alameda.

Dedicated on June 3, 2000, it quickly became a landmark at the retirement community and it now features a “Plant of the Week” (Cairns’ idea), has a lovely wooden bench for viewing (courtesy of resident Gwen

Cooley) and bursts with year-long color. Wandering paths among the beds allow close inspection of the plants and two central three-foot paths accommodate wheelchairs.

Cherry and Cairns estimate they each spend four or five hours per week tending, watering and planting new specimens. The tiny succulents from McGuinness’ garden have already turned into cabbage-size beauties in one corner (she’s jealous); next to the Memorial Building, a “dwarf” buddleja is almost two stories high, and a wide variety of colorful salvias, buckwheat (both red and sulfur yellow), Moroccan daisies, sages, godetia, fescue and yarrows flourish.

The Pilgrim Haven Residents’ Council now makes regular contributions to the garden for ongoing maintenance and plant purchases. A brand new lemon tree is the latest addition, replacing an old and diseased tree which was on the site.

The garden is an incredible showplace of successful planting and grouping, a model which any local gardener could benefit from visiting. Cherry keeps red and white-blooming plants at one end of the approximately 15′ X 50′ area and blue and yellow plants at the opposite end.

“I learned long ago to segregate your colors and work out a year-round blooming schedule,” she said of her perfectly-coordinated color plan.

Near the gigantic buddleja, she groups food plants for butterfly larvae: dill, bronze fennel, parsley and milkweed. At the other end of the garden, which many residents pass three times each day, coming and going to the dining room, is a spectacularly healthy white gaura, spilling a showy fountain of dainty blossoms in all directions.

Cairns thinks the French mounding plan contributes a lot to the garden’s rapid success: “It gives you drainage, more planting area in a limited space and aesthetic interest; also, you don’t have to walk into the garden itself to tend it - so the soil doesn’t get compacted,” he said.

“The residents here just never fail to amaze me,” McGuinness said. “We have an incredible array of talent.”