Tucked off Central Avenue, a forgotten plot of ground gains respect, and returns it.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published March 24, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - The colorful, cool oasis is a refreshing surprise on Central Avenue, next to an antiques store chock-full of finds and steps away from a Thai restaurant.
The Serenity Garden, as it is called, is a memorial to AIDS victims mostly, but also honors others, including a woman who died of breast cancer and two men who lost their lives in a car accident.
"Basically, the garden is there for everybody to sit and contemplate. It's serene. It's like someone's backyard garden," says Gerardo "Gerry" Benedicto, 40, who with his partner, Donald Biglands, 61, have created this spot at 1045 Central Ave. where climbing roses, marigolds and hibiscus bloom.
Amid the flowers are rocks that bear the names of Doug Chandler, Kevin Hayes, Patrick Angelico, H. William Penn, Denise Delapenha and others whose families and friends have chosen this way to memorialize them.
Benedicto, who used to own an antiques and flower shop in upstate New York, is the gardener. Biglands, by his own admission, simply keeps the beds of ornamental cabbage, milkweed, snap dragons, devil's trumpets and cactus watered. Also - less often these days - Biglands finds himself removing things like a brown paper bag with an empty beer can that has been thrown thoughtlessly onto the property.
Keeping the garden pristine is made easier because it is next door to Agnis Godfrey Antiques & Collectibles, the shop he and Benedicto opened in 2001. The store's location was chosen with the garden in mind, Biglands said, going on to give a mini history of the memorial project.
The garden, he said, first was planted in Gulfport, in front of Positive Expressions, a gallery that raised money for people with AIDS by selling their artwork. Biglands, a volunteer at the gallery, which was at the time on Beach Boulevard, decided to design the garden as an additional fundraiser.
"I'm creative and I'm spiritual and I wanted to help in any way I could," he said.
It was called the Millennium AIDS Memorial Garden. People paid $100 to place rocks engraved with the names of their loved ones around the plants. At a ceremony on Nov. 16, 1999, the city of Gulfport issued a proclamation in recognition of World AIDS Day, and Biglands formally handed over the garden to Positive Expressions. Unfortunately, the gallery fell on hard times and closed. Relatives retrieved some of the memorial rocks and the remainder were rescued by owners of the Hula Hula, a Gulfport store, said Biglands, a Canadian by birth and a former editorial operations director at Fortune magazine.
When he and his partner decided to open their antiques store, he said, they specifically looked for a place where they could give the rocks a home. But, said Biglands, the garden was initially not welcomed.
He learned that for decades, going as far back as the 1930s, the area with its shady tree had been used as a gathering place for men looking for day labor. It was known as the Break Corner, he said. It also was a spot where litter was strewn and people relieved themselves.
"It's gone through a (complete) transformation," said Benedicto, a flight attendant for United Airlines.
The men who gathered there initially were upset to see what was happening to their spot, so Benedicto and Biglands decided to enlist their help to create the garden.
"They have become very proprietary about it," Biglands said of the space enclosed by crotons and a low white picket fence and where two garden benches welcome visitors.
During a visit Monday evening, he showed off the milkweed that lures butterflies and the birdhouses that sway from the trees where blooms of orchids are beginning to appear. Pointing to a tall stand of bamboo that leaned against the side of his shop, Biglands marveled at how much it has grown. There were sculptures, among them a steel re-creation of the looped red ribbon that's a symbol of the AIDS pandemic, and a female Buddhist statue. That evening also, wind socks shaped like fish fluttered at the garden's back entrance, but goldfish donated by a man with HIV have been moved inside. People had been urinating in the pond in which the fish swam, Biglands said.
The owners of the garden hope more people will use it as a memorial. They ask for a $50 donation to place rocks with the names of loved ones in the garden. All money raised from the rocks and from $5 T-shirts are used to maintain the memorial, Biglands said.
Though the garden - which is in the former Dome Business District, recently renamed the Edge - primarily remembers AIDS victims, Biglands and Benedicto want it to be inclusive and have hung a plaque on their building that reads in part: "Lost friends and loved ones are remembered in our garden. Disease, poverty, racism, hunger, ignorance and discrimination continue to decimate our community. This garden is meant to encourage positive activism and to provide solace for ALL people."
