A Peaceful Garden of Sharing

A Peaceful Garden of Sharing

Joe Schletz is finally tasting the fruits of 16 years of labor transforming his barren eight-acre property into a garden and park that he now is designing especially for older people and those with disabilities.

Schletz, 50, sees that fruit in the faces of those who enjoy the verdant retreat he created single-handedly in Kalispell, Mont. (pop. 14,223). Peaceful Gardens lets the wheelchair-users, seniors, and others with disabilities share in the wonders of nature.

“They express joy in creating new life, in planting seeds, and watching the seasons unfold,’’ Schletz says of garden visitors. “It feels like my total life purpose.”

Schletz relates his effort to Field of Dreams, the popular film in which actor Kevin Costner listens to voices that tell him to build a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. “If you build it they will come,’’ he says, quoting the movie.

He was inspired to make his garden accessible about three years ago while in Arizona, where he spends winters working in the windshield repair business. He noticed how much his senior clients enjoyed their gardens there.

“It struck me because I saw them gardening, but then I noticed they were in chairs,’’ Schletz says.

The tranquil garden in Montana is encircled by a living wall of 357 blue spruce trees and is a hands-on experience. Five residents of Windward Place, an assisted living center, make monthly visits, pulling weeds and planting strawberries. Windward Director Bonnie Talley says residents love the sunshine and the beauty of the garden.

“It’s so important for seniors to have a feeling of helping something grow and taking care of it,’’ Talley says.

Talley describes Schletz—who has no formal horticultural training—as an “artist in a manual sense’’—who has created a dramatic landscape from treeless range land.

People from Kalispell’s Lamplighter House, a nonprofit day treatment program for people with mental illnesses, tend the garden every Saturday.

“We start everything from seed, and we water and care for the plants,’’ says Teri Loveall, Lamplighter activities coordinator. Loveall says they take the harvest home to make salads. “It gets them to focus on taking good care of themselves, getting fresh air and exercise, and making healthy eating decisions.’’

The garden is still a work in progress, however. Schletz strolls down the half-mile gravel pathway that soon will be paved for wheelchair access, pointing out cascading waterfalls, a fishpond, living archways of shrubs and trees, and juniper he has sculpted into dragons.

Schletz is shaping trees into living walls of resting-places where visitors can enjoy Montana’s expansive vistas. One of these “garden rooms” houses a campfire site for gathering to tell stories, sing songs, or recite poetry. Another is tiled with a giant checkerboard.

At the base of the hillside are two wheelchair accessible beds where strawberries, vegetables, and herbs grow.

Schletz pays most costs now, although he has gotten some donations. He hopes the gardens will become self-supporting, and eventually hopes to build a coffeehouse and a small hotel designed for the handicapped.

He’s confident about the garden’s future and cites obstacles he has already overcome. When pine weevils killed the tops of spruce trees, Schletz made the best of it by shaping the remaining tree branches into ovals like a ship’s porthole so people in chairs can look through the solid wall of trees at the night sky.

“You just learn to make lemonade out of lemons,’’ Schletz says.

But his biggest dream isn’t for his own garden. Schletz wants to have the Peaceful Garden experience duplicated around the world, saying he hopes respect for the aged will increase as the baby boomers grow older.

“We must give credence to the wisdom of age.”

Writer Marie Hoeffner lives on a ranch in Winston, Mont., with her husband and three children.

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