Rock garden offers a retreat for resident

If you drive up to Castle Rock Rehabilitation Center and the Villa, a small patch of trees at the front of the parking lot might draw your attention. You might notice the eclectic lawn ornaments, hear the wind chimes, or see the colorful painted rocks spread on the ground in front of another rock with red letters spelling out "The Castle Rock and Villa Rock Garden."

If you look closely, you might see a woman sitting in a chair made out of horseshoes tucked among the trees, reading or tossing out peanuts for the squirrels or just sitting and enjoying the outdoors. 

"This has been my salvation," Sharon Patterson said, looking around the rock garden. 

Sharon is a resident at the Villa, the assisted living facility at Mission at Castle Rock. The rock garden has been her ongoing project for several years. 

"I'm a very outside person and there's not enough in here to keep me occupied," Sharon explained. "So I just started going out there and we started painting rocks."

A few years ago, residents at the Villa and the Castle Rock Rehabilitation Center started having rock painting parties, and the rock garden became the place to display them. Even people from outside Castle Rock would bring their own painted rocks to contribute or to trade. Then the rock garden began to expand with other decorations. For the last two years, Ace Hardware donated flowers to go into the garden. 

"Well, you know what the deer do to the flowers," Sharon said. When deer started coming in and eating everything, Sharon fought to keep them out - an ongoing battle. 

"The deer have just about eaten us out of house and home," she complained. But she has put in fake flowers and uses deer spray to try to deter the troublemakers. Other less disruptive animals are welcome to the garden, though.

"I feed the squirrels and I feed the birds," Sharon said. "I get me quite a train out there, because they'll follow me." 

The Villa kitchen will let Sharon take any leftover bread, which she'll dry out and scatter for the animals, along with peanuts and other small treats. She's grateful to Castle Rock for being generous and helping her with the garden when they can.

In addition to the painted rocks, Sharon has expanded on the rock garden with extra decorations, including "odds and ends of yard ornaments" that she's either collected or made, such as pieces of sagebrush she glued fake flowers to. 

One side of the garden houses a stump that a fellow resident wanted there because she thought might be petrified wood. Sharon recalled how she was dragging the stump along the road to bring it to the garden when the police pulled over to see what she was doing - then loaded the stump into their patrol car to transport it for her. 

Sharon enjoys spending time in the rock garden, either to work on it because it gives her something to do or just to be outside. 

"During the summer I'll bring a book out here and just sit here and read all day," she said. 

Sharon also added extra chairs to the garden for anyone who wants to join her. She enjoys when other people come to look at the garden or watch the squirrels and birds. 

"It's fun having the people come out there and walk around it," Sharon said. "I'll visit with them. They seem to enjoy it very much."

One change Sharon would like to make to the rock garden is to add a ramp to make it even more accessible. She explained that, since most of the residents have walkers or wheelchairs, they can't get over the step up it takes to get into the rock garden. A ramp would allow even more residents to spend time in and enjoy the garden. 

Even without a ramp, Sharon will continue her work on the garden to make it a spot that's fun for everyone to at least look at. 

"We're trying now to decorate for Halloween," Sharon said. Her room is full of the Halloween decorations she's been busy making, like ghosts made from tennis balls and sheets. Another resident's sons hung up a line in the rock garden to hang the decorations from when the time comes. 

"I hope people will come by and look at it," Sharon said. She isn't sure if they'll decorate for Christmas too, but said they'll see what comes up. 

"I'm not looking forward to winter coming up, but that's the way it is. I'll go out there in my snowsuit and build snowballs I guess," Sharon added with a laugh.