LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — The Las Vegas Community Healing Garden was sketched out on a napkin the day after the 1 October shooting.
One of the designers for the garden, landscape architect Jay Pleggenkuhle, told FOX5 that it started with a heart and grew from there.
Landscape architect Jay Pleggenkuhle spoke to FOX5 about the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden.(KVVU)
“October 1, 2017, changed Las Vegas forever,” he said. “My son woke me up on Sunday night, saying there was something going on.”
Pleggenkuhle sketched the garden with Daniel Perez of Stonerose Landscapes. It was constructed by the city and volunteers in just four days.
“We thought, well, maybe we could do a pop-up garden,” Pleggenkuhle said. “I thought this would go on for three or four days, and we’d borrow some plants from Star Nursery, and then we would take them back. And that didn’t happen. The city attorney, they said, could this be a permanent thing if we found a piece of property and they gave us this?”
The memorial garden is filled with shrubs, flowers, walkways of pavers and benches. Visitors find a wall of remembrance and a grove of trees.
“People from across the city, country and the world came together on an empty piece of desert to plant the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden that really brought people out, and it brought out the best in people,” he said. “The gentleman who formed the concrete for the heart works for Capriati Construction. We’re standing here in a dirt lot, and he rolled up in his truck.”
The garden opened on Oct. 6, 2017. An oak tree, donated by Sigfried and Roy, known as the “tree of life,” sits in the middle of the garden. It stands inside a heart-shaped planter adorned with tiles made by victims’ families, survivors and the community.
“The garden honors the lives of those lost on October 1,” he said. “It also celebrates life, fitness, love and compassion. Plants are living things — are symbols of life. And, there are 58 trees. One for each person who lost their life. It is sad that it takes something of this magnitude to bring people together, but it’s kind of like a law of the universe. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”
A gunman killed 58 people that night and injured 500 more who were attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Pleggenkuhle says the garden is to help each other heal and to choose to do good in the world.
“There is beauty in this world if we choose to seek it; we can choose to love over fear. Light over darkness. Life over death. Hope over despair,” he said. “We can choose humankind. That’s why the garden is here.”
More information on the healing garden could be found on the City of Las Vegas’s website. It’s located at 1015 S. Casino Center Boulevard and is open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Copyright 2025 KVVU. All rights reserved.
Comments are closed.