Salt Lake's Secret Garden

"The city is impressed with Gilgal," Pope said, adding that FOGG's passionate efforts to maintain the art for future generations is especially amazing. "They have challenges in being able to raise money and do the things they need to do. They haven't lost hope. And they keep going after it."

Restoring the treasure

With added support from volunteers in the Salt Lake area, FOGG hopes to restore the garden to the condition Child had during its prime.

"The Friends of Gilgal Garden have worked very, very hard to begin to restore the garden," Peters said. "It was very much a living part of the community when Child was constructing it."

Utah Master Gardeners have spent four years volunteering and doing gardening work at Gilgal. The group is responsible for the initial cleanup and ongoing planting.

"It was so overgrown at the beginning that homeless people were living in the back, and you couldn't even see where they were living," said Traci Dahle with the Salt Lake group. "We wanted it to be a place for kids to go, rather than homeless people and druggies. We wanted to make it more of a beautiful, serene, content park."

Dahle said the group volunteers 200 to 300 hours a year planting and upkeeping donated flowers. Through old paperwork, pictures and memories from Hortense, the group has tried to use plants similar to what Child used, which are mostly biblical plants. Recently, the group planted an almond tree at the Last Chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes sculpture, where an almond tree had originally been but died the same year Child did.

The next big project FOGG is hoping to finish by the end of the summer is the construction of a retaining wall at the back of the garden, where the garden borders a business parking lot. Bob Bliss, a professor and former dean of architecture at University of Utah, said the retaining wall will be an open structure rather than a straight wall, so there will be room for plants. Bliss has been in charge of numerous architectural projects at the garden, including the redesign of the new entry way, which used to be a service drive.

Unfortunately, much of the restoration includes restoring sculptures ruined over the years by vandals or people climbing on the art. In addition to pieces that have been chipped or knocked over, some have been stolen.

"It kind of seems to be a magnet for youths," Hortense said. "It has an aura about it, a mystery. But there isn't anything mysterious about it. There's a lot of deep, philosophical things."

"We hate to put signs up because it spoils it. But it's a perfect place for children who love to climb rocks."