SANDPOINT — There is a character in the book “The Secret Garden” who can charm new growth out of even the poorest ground.  Leaning on his rake, Ben Weatherstaff preaches about the meaning of life and happiness from a flowerbed pulpit.     A local teen named Jay D. Baker seems to understand that message.  His idea of a perfect day is spending the daylight hours elbow deep in loamy soil as he turns bare ground into flourishing gardens.

This summer, the 15-year-old is managing to do just that — at home and in the Healing Garden, created by Bonner Community Hospice next to Bonner General Hospital, where he tends plants as a volunteer.

“There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than gardening,” said Jay D., who completed the master gardener program last year and currently is enrolled in both the advanced master gardener and home horticulture classes through the University of Idaho Extension Office.  “I spend all day outside. I basically just come in for meals and when it gets too dark to work any more.”

Throughout a winding conversation that wended its way along the paths at the Healing Garden, he scanned the flowerbeds and plucked out weeds.  Within a few minutes, the teen had amassed a double handful of the vegetative interlopers.

“Sometimes you almost wish you weren’t a gardener,” he said, “so you could just walk through a garden and enjoy it instead of seeing the weeds.”

Not that he minds weeding all that much.  Jay D. spent last week clearing weeds and mulching his perennial garden on a hillside at home, where his family has a sizable spread.  Between vegetables and flowerbeds, the young gardener takes up a little more of that space every growing season.

“But we have 35 acres, so I still have a ways to go,” he said.

When he attended master gardener classes last year, Jay D. was the lone teenager in a room full of 27 adults.  Since completing the course, his classmates have fairly buried him in plants.

“This spring, I got 10 roses, phlox, Shasta daisies, asters and a whole bunch of bulbs,” he listed.  “I planted all of them.

“Now I have walkways this wide,” he added, holding his hands about 10 inches apart.

As part of his continuing education, Jay D. volunteers by doing research for the extension office plant clinic, where he fields questions about anything related to plants and trees.  The clinic has been a crash course in horticulture, he said, with new mysteries to solve every day and, so far, no two questions about the same topic.

College is still a few years off, but the home-schooled high school student already has his major picked out, as well as the school he plans to attend.  A recent trip to the University of Idaho convinced him that the five-year landscape architect’s curriculum would be a good academic fit.

“It covers all the things I’m interested in,” he said.  “Plants, landscaping, design and art.

“My mother has a degree in art and I think of gardening that way,” he continued.

From a seat beside the waterfall at the center of the Healing Garden, where he has volunteered for the past three years, Jay D. drew attention to the plant life surrounding him.

“This certainly is art,” he said.

The gardener takes it in stride that, despite being young, he has developed something of a reputation for expertise in the field of growing things.  People many times his age call on him for tips on how to make plants thrive and even experts have begun to stop him in the aisles of a store to ask how he would handle a bug that might be munching on a prized rose bush.

On the subject of whether some people have a gift for gardening, Jay D. pondered before answering.

“There certainly are people who can make things grow like you can’t believe,” he said.  “You just can’t stick a plant in the ground, water it and forget about it.”

Yes, he was pressed, but is there such a thing as a green thumb?  And does he happen to have one?

“Probably, yeah,” he allowed after a moment’s consideration.

Jay D. leaned over to pull another weed out by the roots before adding it to the pile at his feet.  Then he looked up and shared his secret to creating art in the garden.

“You’ve got to like plants and really like taking care of them,” he said.  “If you do, they’ll grow like crazy.” 

For more information on the Healing Garden, call Bonner Community Hospice at 265-1179. Donations can be sent in care of the Healing Garden to P.O. Box 1448, Sandpoint, ID, 83864.