Walking the neighborhood you are bound to come across secret gardens. Well I found one at Merritt Trace Elementary School @ 651 Dana Avenue, San Jose (everyone in the neighborhood just calls ithe school, "Trace"). Now that school is out for the Summer you can easily visit Sarah's Secret Garden. During the school year you have to wait until after school hours or on weekends.
You can see the garden along Dana Avenue between the school buildings and the green grassy fields across from the library. To enter from the school playground side as the Dana street gates to the garden are locked.
This garden has that nostalgic romantic abandoned garden feel due to the various states of decay the various art pieces are in that you'd expect to come across at a garden you would find in abandoned near Chernobyl or Fukishima.
The school is no stranger to gardening. From best I can tell, Trace had a Victory garden during WWII, a Colonial Garden (maybe in celebration of 1976), a more recent award winning "Trace Garden" in 2003 and is currently known as Sarah's Secret memorial garden since 2010.
The garden is dedicated to eight year old Sarah Nicole Lilly Saxton (2001-2010), a second grader at Trace Elementary who lost her battle to cancer in 2010. You can tell the community put a lot of time and effort into the garden with a bench, bird houses, weather station, and still active raised gardening beds.
Four years have passed since Sarah's classmates sought solace from grief through gardening and art. Today her classmates are headed next door to Hoover Middle School.
For now the Garden remain's Sarah's Secret, and will be reincarnated again when volunteers, staff and students have cause to embrace their green thumbs and Earth Science classes again.
You can see the garden along Dana Avenue between the school buildings and the green grassy fields across from the library. To enter from the school playground side as the Dana street gates to the garden are locked.
This garden has that nostalgic romantic abandoned garden feel due to the various states of decay the various art pieces are in that you'd expect to come across at a garden you would find in abandoned near Chernobyl or Fukishima.
The school is no stranger to gardening. From best I can tell, Trace had a Victory garden during WWII, a Colonial Garden (maybe in celebration of 1976), a more recent award winning "Trace Garden" in 2003 and is currently known as Sarah's Secret memorial garden since 2010.
The garden is dedicated to eight year old Sarah Nicole Lilly Saxton (2001-2010), a second grader at Trace Elementary who lost her battle to cancer in 2010. You can tell the community put a lot of time and effort into the garden with a bench, bird houses, weather station, and still active raised gardening beds.
Four years have passed since Sarah's classmates sought solace from grief through gardening and art. Today her classmates are headed next door to Hoover Middle School.
For now the Garden remain's Sarah's Secret, and will be reincarnated again when volunteers, staff and students have cause to embrace their green thumbs and Earth Science classes again.