STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Pets now have their own special place at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden.
A new Pet Memory Garden will be unveiled during a ceremony from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 9.
The garden was sparked by a donation of a statue of two little river otters from Ketchum residents David and Jill Hitchin. A few other Garden Pet Pals chipped in to make the special space possible.
“What started it was when I heard a woman at church talking about having to put her horse down and how traumatic that was for her,” said David Hitchin. “We had this beautiful statue and we added to it a plaque that says, ‘The bond that is true is true forever.’ It just seemed a fitting way to celebrate the memory of our pets.”
“We enjoy our four-legged friends in nature so it’s only right to celebrate them in nature,” added Kat Vanden Heuvel, executive director of the garden. “We did have to change the name from memorial garden to memory garden, however, because people thought it would be a place to bury their pets.”
The pet memory garden—a place to contemplate and celebrate man’s best friend and other significant four-legged creatures in our lives, is situated just west of the Garden of Infinite Compassion.
Kathy Noble, who tends to the garden, has chosen Korean maples and other trees for the site based on textures and other qualities. Viburnum trees, for instance, will provide white umbrella-like blossom in the spring.
“The color scheme is white and blue, which should provide kind of a contemplative meditative mood,” she said.