At twilight last Friday, I visited the secret garden behind Altamont Oaks.

The garden had been created and lovingly tended for years by Yvonne Lustenhouwer. Her obituary arrived at our news office last week.

And, as I wrote last week about the well-worn wooden shoes that had belonged to her father, a master carpenter, and the ice-skate runners that she had worn as a girl growing up in the Netherlands, what swept me away was the memory of her garden.

I had first visited the garden nine years ago on a September day warm with sunshine after Yvonne’s friend, Rose Anne Rogers, had told me, “It’s like a secret garden.”

I had loved Frances Hodson Burnet’s novel, “The Secret Garden,” since I was young. And I remembered snuggling with my own children at bedtime to read the story and wanting never to put the book down.

As I rushed, camera in hand, to see Altamont’s secret garden for the first time on that September day, I thought of the spoiled, sour-faced little girl, Mary Lennox. She grew up in wealth in India at the turn of the last century, the only child of a British couple. When cholera killed all the adults in her household, she was sent to Yorkshire to live with her uncle at Misselthwaite Manor.

There, again, despite the wealth, Mary was neglected. She discovers a sickly boy, just her age, Colin, shut away as an invalid since his father, Mary’s uncle, was remote in his grief over his wife’s death.  Mary discovers a secret garden at Misselthwaite. As she and Colin tend it, with the help of a kind servant’s son, Dickon, they flourish as surely as the flowers.

I had driven from my home to the newspaper office hundreds or even thousands of times and never looked inside Altamont Oaks. When I turned off the boulevard that September day, I discovered what might be called a secret courtyard. Bordered on three sides with apartment buildings, the center space, no doubt intended for cars, was vibrant with kids at play. No one had the sickly look of Colin or the sour look of Mary. They were happily skipping rope or riding bikes.

At the far end of the complex, Rose Ann Rogers sat with a cluster of friends on her front lawn. She took me behind the complex to see the garden, her face shining as she pointed to a bright orange blossom on a vine her friend had grown.

It was hard to take in all at once. The garden stretched like a wave along the back border of the property. The plants were varied and lush; interspersed along the garden’s length were charming tableaux, vignettes that seemed almost other-worldly: a small wooden bridge with an owl standing guard here; a lighthouse standing like a beacon there; further down, a trio of quaint birdhouses; and still further, a gazing globe on a pedestal with a metal pheasant at its foot.

The love and care that went into the garden was visible at every turn, but it wasn’t until I returned on a later visit to meet the gardener, Yvonne Lustenhouwer, that I understood the depth of love that had gone into creating her living work of art.

“It’s almost like a memory garden,” Yvonne said. She pointed to some bushes and said they were there in memory of a neighbor who said to dig them up as she was dying of cancer.

A well-worn duck statue belonged to another neighbor, Melvina Gifford, who had died recently. “I said to her children it will have a place of honor in the garden,” said Yvonne. She and her friends talked fondly of the woman they called “Melsy” and said how much they missed her, with Yvonne describing her as “the glue that made us family.”

I decided right then and there that Yvonne and her friends, her Altamont Oaks family, should lead our Home and Garden section. For years, we’d featured wealthy estates, historic homes, even a castle. What we found at Altamont Oaks with Yvonne and her friends was the essence of home.

“This place gets a bad reputation because it’s low-income housing,” said Yvonne, “but 98 percent of us take care in making our homes.”

“This,” said Rose Anne Rogers, “is our last home.”

Yvonne’s garden bore silent and beautiful testimony to that. Creating it took more love than money. The manager helped out with water because the cost was so high, and the neighbors all enjoyed it.

Similar to the wisdom that Mary and Colin found in their playmate Dickon, I learned some lessons from Yvonne that went beyond typical gardening tips.

She told me how she gave plants to friends and received them in return. That makes both gardens richer.

She told me, too, about how she loves working in the dirt. It restores her after a bad day, much the way it rejuvenated Mary Lennox. Yvonne didn’t mince words. “My thing in life is to keep active,” she said. “I figure I can lie down when I’m dead.”

Good advice, I thought.

Finally, she talked about how impatient her friend Melsy Gifford had been when her daughter gave her a stick of forsythia. Yvonne told her friend, “They’re like children. First, they crawl; then, they walk; then, they run.”

I need to learn that kind of patience, I thought.

Yvonne went on; she had told her friend, Melsy, “In the third year, it will bloom.” Then Yvonne concluded, “This year, it really did bloom — and she wasn’t here to see it.”

Well then, I thought, never mind patience; what’s the point?

One of Yvonne’s friends answered my question, although I hadn’t said a word.

“She’s here in spirit,” said the friend.

So, after I learned of Yvonne’s death, I made the pilgrimage on Friday to her garden. Would it still be there? I wondered, feeling a bit of trepidation as I walked to the back of Altamont Oaks. 

I could see the lighthouse still stood as a beacon. Her brother from Texas had brought it to her after his wife died; he wanted Yvonne to have it, she said. The boards were weathered now but the lighthouse still stood strong.

And the miniature castle her brother, a cabinetmaker, had fashioned from PVC pipes capped with upturned funnels, a home for purple martins, still stood on its tall pole.

I could see the buds coming on the lilac bush near the lighthouse and the spring-green blades of bulb plants piercing the rich dark soil.

I remembered Yvonne telling me, “I get out here and think of all the people who passed away and they’re kind of here.”

As if on cue, a mourning dove cooed. I thought of Yvonne, and smiled.

The Secret Garden still has its magic.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer