Goats, garden lifts spirits at Healdsburg Senior Living Community

At the Healdsburg Senior Living Community, a legacy lives on in the uplifting garden scene - a huge space in the back of the buildings replete with waves of vivid flowers, corn and sunflower fences, sprawling squash vines, precise rows of peppers with fruits like Christmas ornaments, friendly goats and darling therapy chickens.

Tony Fisher, the facilities marketing director, conceived this magical scene six years ago as a tribute to his foster mother, who raised him and his three brothers, along with 75 other foster children.

“She always said what she loved was growing flowers and vegetables, and being around animals,” Fisher says. “She was 60 when she raised me, and I thought the generation here would also have this connection. I wanted her story and blessing to live on, and I am able to perpetuate it with this garden.”

For the residents who may feel their life spirit is fading, a garden might give them an opportunity to connect with life, he thought, each on their own terms and abilities. They could be actively propagating and transplanting, cutting and arranging flowers, petting the chickens, eating an explosion of cherry tomatoes or walking the exercise trail through the opulent morning glory clad arches surrounded by bees, butterflies and brilliant flowers.

Fisher says, “A garden meets us where we are and lifts us up with its rich beauty.”

Wanting to give all residents the opportunity to experience purpose, value and contribution, and to connect with life, Fisher engages the residents to start each season’s seeds, and though residents may plant them too deeply or on the surface, all grow, giving residents a direct connection to the life a seed embodies.

A stroll or wheelchair ride in the open air, with the colorful flowers, flitting butterflies and blowing forms of the garden, often gives memory care residents a respite from frustrations that some can experience.

“It allows them to spread their wings,” he says.

Start small

Fisher was a complete novice at gardening when he began six years ago, and his idea and the garden were initially small.

It expands yearly, and over time he has developed an efficient system for managing its complexity, allowing it to be run by a minimal amount of people and with minimal effort.

Amending the hard-packed soil with organic compost each year, installing a systematic irrigation system, planting flowers for beneficial insects and bees, crop rotation, strict weeding and disease-resistant vegetable varieties have generated a healthy, easy to maintain garden glowing with health, life and lots of produce.

Each year Fisher tries new, colorful varieties to generate a “wow” factor for residents.

Bee hives and worm bins were entirely new ideas for him; now they are part of life.

The garden keeps growing, and each year it encompasses more area.

This year an elevated sensory garden was added for those suffering from loss of touch, but it is intriguing for all.

To the fingertips, a different group of low-growing plants is revealed every two feet, with textures ranging from velvety, grassy, stiff, soft and rubbery.

Following these are alpine and large strawberries. On the large bank above them is a profusion of new plants that attract hummingbirds and butterflies.

Garden parties

The garden lives and thrives through the energy of many.

Rob Matthews, the executive director, does the rototilling and finds the funding for the garden.

Julia Agee, the activity director, holds activities and garden parties.

Physical therapists help residents with the new exercise equipment in the garden. The kitchen staff prepares meals each day that feature garden produce.

Facility owners John Alaux and Tom Patzke listened to the enthusiastic idea and gave Fisher the opportunity and freedom to create it. Now they express pride in the profuse and vibrant perfection of each row.

But it is facility workers, brothers Javier and Indio Castro and Lino Montebello, who are its primary tenders and who work with Fisher to perform the multitude of tasks in the garden and around the property to keep it manicured and glowing with health.

Fisher says, “People say the garden is amazing. I tell them, what is amazing to me is that there are not more like it.”

His greatest wish is that he and the garden help generate more gardens of life and connection.

People tell him, “Tony, I didn’t know you were creative.” He replies, “I didn’t either.”

A garden is in all of us.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact her at katebfrey@gmail.com. On Twitter @katebfrey.