Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Betty Wesson Peck's garden was selected by Monterey author to be listed in some rarefied company.
Saratoga garden featured in a book on sacred space
By Shari Kaplan
For anyone who knows longtime Saratogan Betty Wesson Peck--and there are plenty who do--it comes as no surprise that her garden and love of it have been captured in a book.
In Cultivating Sacred Space: Gardening for the Soul (Pomegranate Press), Elizabeth Murray records Peck's garden in words and pictures. The Monterey-based writer, photographer, painter, lecturer and garden designer befriended Murray some years ago when the two met at a writing workshop. Each was impressed with the other's love and appreciation for gardening and nature and the spirituality of both.
"I grew up loving the Earth and feel it's the answer to everything," says Peck, who helped found the Saratoga Community Garden and worked for many decades as a Saratoga kindergarten teacher. Taking the translation of "kindergarten" literally, Peck incorporated trips to gardens, nature-related crafts and the growing of plants and flowers into her lesson plans.
"I feel teaching should always include exposure to gardens, and I believe that all kindergarten doors should open upon a garden," she adds. "I believe the garden is the source of all wisdom and all art. Even seeds themselves are so full of mystery and wonder!"
The women kept in touch, visiting and talking often. Peck and her husband, Saratoga News columnist Willys Peck, even invited Murray to be the May Queen for one of their May Day celebrations, which feature music and dancing around a May Pole, flowered garlands in everyone's hair and fresh strawberry shortcake and cream.
"We celebrate everything; there's nothing we don't celebrate in the garden. We try to use every bit of it for our loves: love of reading, talking, dancing, acting...," Peck says while strolling through her and Willys' nearly two acres blanketed with trees and flowers.
They've tucked loads of surprises into their wilderness, including the open-air Theater of the Ground that hosts small plays to this day; a weathered wooden table and chairs titled "Cultural Change Through Conversation," where Peck holds weekly salons; a narrow-gauge railroad named Lower Expectation; an open spot for gatherings called The Golden Ring; the cozy Reading Treehouse for the Peck granddaughters; and tree knotholes and handmade "mailboxes" in which the girls leave notes for local faeries and wood nymphs--which Peck answers. The unassuming patch of woodland set quietly back from busy Saratoga Avenue is truly a magical "secret garden."
When it came time to write a tribute to her favorite sacred spaces, Murray chose an even dozen. The Peck's garden joined 11 others: one each in Japan, Bali, Maine and Pennsylvania; two in France (Monet's Water Lily Garden in Giverny and Mark Brown's Personal Gardens of Tranquillity in Varengeville); and five in California (Big Sur, Santa Cruz, Brookdale, her late husband Gerald Bol's bamboo sanctuary in Sebastolpol, and her own sacred space in Monterey called Lizzie's Garden of Memory).
Saratoga, California Since 1955
