One of the last bills that Abraham Lincoln signed into law before his assassination was to incorporate the National Asylums for the Relief of Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, later renamed the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, to remove any negativity attached to the term "asylum." There were three original asylums created which housed disabled veterans of the civil war.
Central Branch in Dayton, Ohio was affectionately called the “Mother Home” due to its physical size and large population of residents. The Mother Home was not only a haven for disabled veterans, but also an incredibly popular tourist attraction, thanks in part to the elaborate gardens created and tended by the Civil War Veterans.
Sadly, those elaborate gardens at the Central Branch fell into disrepair, until a new group of volunteers, led by an 80-year-old Navy veteran, uncovered the original foundations of the gardens and began restoring them to their former glory.
The story goes that the Grotto Gardens at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center were started in 1868 when Frank Mundt, who was a Civil War Veteran and resident of the Mother Home, collected vines and native wildflowers from nearby farms and began planting them in an abandoned stone quarry on the east side of the grounds.
So it seems appropriate that when volunteers came in 2013 to restore the beautiful gardens that Mundt inspired, they would bring flowers from their own yards for the restoration.
Susan Baker was one of the original volunteers ten years ago. She said “In the very first years after we got it all kind of cleared out and started to create these gardens, we had no money and we had no plants to put in. So we can walk around still and say those Iris are from my backyard, those lilies are from your yard. We put out a call to the Master Gardeners of Montgomery County. Next thing you know there are vans dumping out plants here and it was amazing.”
Maura Boesch is a master gardener and volunteers with the Grotto Gardens. Like many of the volunteers who have helped restore this Civil War era garden, Boesch has ties to the military. Her husband is retired Air Force.
Boesch took me on a tour of the gardens. The gardens honor the men and women, who played a role in the history of the Mother Home.
As we walked around, Beosch said “This place is just filled with history. You feel like you are walking on hallowed ground. And that is part of the reason I love it. For example the stairs that we are going to go up here were laid by the [American] Civil War soldiers.”
Boesch and her husband created a handbook that documents the history of the Grotto Gardens, complete with before and after photos. Vintage photos from the turn of the 20th Century show elaborate Victorian-style flower beds with intricate designs set around a central pond with a fountain. Ladies in long dresses with parasols and men in straw hats stroll through the gardens and sit by the pond in these photos.
The pond is fed by seven different springs that flow out of grottoes set in the horseshoe-shaped rocky hillside. Boesch points to rock archways in the hillside, “And so you see that grotto and there’s a grotto up there. American Civil War soldiers thought they were medicinal, and so they would bathe in them and they would drink from them. Now this grotto here you can see there is a date imprinted on it. You have the keystone arch.”
Set into the hillside is a wonderful keystone stone archway that surrounds one of the springs. The date 1869 is carved into the stone wall and on the floor of the grotto where the spring comes up are carved the words “Grotto Spring."
These springs flowing out of the south facing hillside of the former quarry create a microclimate, which explains why the clumps of towering banana plants growing in this section of the garden are doing so well in Ohio.
Boesch stopped in front of an area garden that is still being reclaimed.
“We’re still working on this area here. Because of the pitch of the hill it's hard to clear this and especially because there is poison ivy and other invasives in there. But they’re working on it,” she said. “It's time consuming labor.”
Ten years ago, most people didn’t even know that the grotto garden with its hand hewn stone steps, rock walls and intricately framed springs even existed on the VA grounds.
Bob Neff, a 90-year-old Master Gardener and Navy Veteran, led the initial volunteer restoration efforts ten years ago and he still works in these gardens. He sets aside his shovel and bucket to retell the story.
“It was clearly overwhelming, but I said I think we need to do it,“ Neff said. “I could see the potential and wanted to honor the Veterans, and being a Veteran I wanted to see what we could do with it. People told me I had lost my mind when we started on it. But I just said we’ll take it a little bit at a time. We’ve just had tremendous community support and a lot of dedicated volunteers.”
“It was a hot mess,” Susan Baker adds. “But how cool to pull back all that honeysuckle and find this wall, and find those steps. I still get chills. I think who walked here before?President Grant spoke here. There were symphonies that were held right here in this lawn. That just is amazing.”
Even though they were disabled, the Civil War Veterans who lived at the Mother Home were expected to work. A group of 75 Civil War Veterans tended these gardens. Today around 35 volunteers have banded together to continue their legacy.
Baker said “the feeling here is like a hug. It embraces you as you walk around and you get a great feeling. So our whole goal is that the Veterans, and the employees, and the public can come here and just sit and feel that - what we feel when we come here and work.”
The Grotto Gardens will be celebrating 10 years in the re-making on Sunday, August 6 from 1 - 4 p.m.
