Gilgal Gardens - Salt Lake City, Utah - Park, Secret Garden, Stone Carvings

Formerly known as The Secret Garden this unique half-acre city park is filled with twelve original sculptures and over seventy engraved stones. These stones are adorned with quotes from scriptures, poems, and literary texts. This garden was fashioned by Thomas Battersby Child, Jr, with work starting in 1945 and continuing until his death in 1963.

After twenty years of additions to the garden, the most eye-catching of the sculptures is a sphinx with the head of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. There are carved grasshoppers lying beside disembodied heads and a hill strewn with stone body parts. There is even a life-sized statue of Child dressed in brick pants.

Located at 749 East 500 South in Salt Lake City, Utah, you will find it in the middle of the block behind houses, a Chuck-A-Rama and a bakery. The park is open from April to September during the hours of 8am to 8pm. From October to March during the hours of 9am to 5pm, weather permitting. It is closed on Christmas, New Years Day, and Thanksgiving.

Most Salt Lake City residents have never heard of Gilgal Garden, or the sculptures. Neither did many of Child's neighbors know what was in his backyard in the mid-twentieth century. Child often said that he hoped the garden would "inspire viewers to ponder the unsolved mysteries of life and struggle to find their own answers.'' Well aware that many people thought Gilgal Garden was strange, he still hoped they would accept its challenge. "You don't have to agree with me,'' he explained. "You may think I am a nut, but I hope I have aroused your thinking and curiosity.''

One review site mentions that there were some in Salt Lake City who knew this area as Stoner Park. It was a popular "cult'' destination and teens would hop the fence at night to get high amidst the bizarre surroundings. Most had no clue about Gilgal or how it had come into being.

Slowly Gilgal's mystique and quiet popularity has grown. The Friends of Gilgal work to spread the word about this eclectic garden. The group banded together in early 2000 to save the garden from being torn apart for a condominium development.

As explained by the Gilgal Garden Education page on mediadivide.org, this was accomplished in part because of the garden's significance as the only identified "visionary art environment'' in Utah. The site states that worldwide attention is being given to these environments. People without formal artistic training are expressing a personal, moral, or religious conviction - by fabricating monuments from found materials. A few examples of these environments are Watts Towers in Los Angeles, the Orange Show in Houston, or the Palais Ideal in France. These three are becoming well known but others are little known and are in danger of being destroyed.

For Gilgal Sculpture Garden, the Friends were able to purchase Gilgal and save it from the bulldozers. They then donated the park to the city. This distinctive garden even made it into the movies. Appearing in Trent Harris' cult movie Plan Ten From Outer Space.

Thomas Battersby Child, Jr. named his garden after the fabled gardens near the River Jordan where the Israelites crossed on their way to the Promised Land. Online sites that mention Gilgal Gardens all comment in some form that it is clear that the gardens were one man's passionate expression, even if years of concentrated study have been unable to determine exactly what he was trying to say.