Early on a recent Wednesday morning, about a dozen volunteers gamely moved benches, raked leaves and cleaned sculptures in Bellingham’s “hidden gem” garden.
Friends of the Big Rock Garden spend hours each week taking care of Big Rock Garden Park, a 2.5-acre sculpture garden in the Silver Beach neighborhood at 2900 Sylvan St. The 27-year-old city park features 39 sculptures, carefully cleaned and kept up by the Friends group, with support from the Parks and Recreation Department.
At biannual work parties, volunteers and some park staff scrub pollen, dust and pine needles from sculptures and take care of the garden. But the rest of the year, volunteers care for their own sections of the garden and spend multiple hours watering weekly, particularly in the summer.
The city purchased the park from George, Mary Ann and David Drake in 1993, according to the city’s website.
Jane Madden, who organized sculpture cleaning on Wednesday morning, remembers visiting the park when it was a commercial nursery that specialized in Japanese Maples and rhododendrons 35-40 years ago. She’s been involved with the stewardship of the park for years.
Now, every season in the park looks different, with the maples turning bright red in the fall and the rhododendrons blooming in the spring.
Madden said she knows the name of every sculpture in the garden: “I’ve cleaned all of them,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s a special place,” Madden said of the park. “We often say it’s a hidden gem.”
Volunteers, who are mostly, if not all, seniors, devote a significant amount of time, labor and money to the park.
Marybeth Phelan, who spends multiple hours a week in the garden, said she’s spent almost $5,000 of her own money over the last several years on hoses, sprinklers and more.
“The money [I’ve spent] is not an issue,” she said, but hopes support from the parks department will come through to fix some of the major issues with the park: the broken irrigation system that prompts the volunteers to water most of the park by hand in the summer, and the fence that is rotting in some places. Volunteer Kathy Edwards has begun rebuilding the fence herself — she’s replaced about 300 boards so far.
Those funds should come through in 2025. The parks department has earmarked $180,000 this year for Big Rock Garden Park. Acting Stewardship Supervisor Freya Fradenburgh said if the budget is approved, the funds will go toward replacing the fence on the perimeter of the park with a “more durable and long-lasting material,” and toward replacing the park’s irrigation system with a “more efficient drip system.”
In 2017–18, the parks department had allocated $45,000 to the park to replace the fence, but due to the allocation not being enough to complete the fence, the funds were likely reallocated, Fradenburgh said.
Parks staff are responsible for facilities and grounds maintenance, overseeing community work parties and providing materials and supplies for the Friends group as needed, Fradenburgh said.
Phelan said she worries about the lack of volunteers, especially as she and many of the other volunteers are in their 70s.
“We really need more community involvement in the park to help maintain it … because we’re all aging out and at some point we won’t be here,” she said.
Phelan began volunteering with the park in 2016. She said it’s her way of giving back to the community.
“Happiness doesn’t come from acquiring things, it comes from giving back,” she said. “That’s how I view this. This is a place I can give back, but it gives me great joy, too, because it’s such a beautiful spot.”
Edwards said when she and her wife walked by the park for the first time, they were stunned by it and quickly joined as volunteers.
“Every time we would be working here, somebody would stop and thank me for working,” she said. “That’s really satisfying.”
People interested in volunteering with Friends of Big Rock Garden Park can contact Corie Jensen at coriejens2u@icloud.com. Interested volunteers must also apply at cob.org/steward and can contact pkvolunteers@cob.org with any questions.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
