He is a gardener at heart.
Curtis Watson, 51, has been transforming a section of his community into a garden for the past three years. Not just any garden – a gully garden.
This Hartland Road, Haynesville, St James resident has planted a number of fruit and flower trees in the gully in that area since the summer of 2007.
According to Watson,the idea came based on the fact that he was always “fascinated” with gardening.
“Even from school days, I spent a lot of time in the garden rather than school itself. I was always into gardening. Before they put up this bridge, we would have to walk down through the gully to get over to the other side . . . it was just before Liz Thompson lost her seat that she put in the bridge. So the bridge was just about finished and I saw the need for a garden n this area.”
He said a member of the community would pay someone to keep the gully clean even before the bridge was erected.
“But I say, well, the grass grow so fast when it rains, what is the point of cleaning all the time? If I plant stuff, that will keep down the grass and you won’t have that much cleaning to do. And seeing that I love gardening, I decided that, well, I am going to start a little garden,” explained Watson, who lives across the street from the gully.
He said he would purchase plants from nearby nurseries and when the nurserymen found out he was using the plants to “beautify” the community, they would give him extras. Watson said he did his planting section by section.
In fact, he said that after planting three sections on one side of the bridge, he got “a little more ambitious and went on the other side”.
“As much as I like gardening, I don’t have the room in my yard to do it and I didn’t want to put the plants in an area where I would have to move them six months later.
“By starting an area there first to park cars and putting the garden around it, and by having too many plants and nowhere to put them, I decided then I got to build more garden.
“Within 2008 I would have planted some of these fruit trees and as the months passed I would keep going further and further.
Sometimes I tell myself, I am not going any further, but I just kept going,” he said enthusiastically, noting that there were over 30 varieties of fruit and flowering trees planted together there.
Watson said he did not do it alone as he would occasionally pay some youth in the area to help him with the cleaning prior to planting.
He said it gave him “pleasure” within his heart to see that he could give the community a facelift.
While he has not yet formalised a name for the garden, Watson said for now, he calls it “the garden of tranquillity”.
“It is a place where you can come and sit down and relax and just inhale the fresh air. When I come out here it takes away everything else from my mind.
“I feel at peace. I come out here and work up a sweat by planting instead of walking the highway,” he said with a smile.
Watson has been a taxi operator for the past 15 years and has worked in the tourism industry before that. He said he just lives one day at a time.
The former St John the Baptist Primary and Secondary school (now defunct) student said one of the difficulties he faced was planting among the rocks and boulders in the gully.
“Also, the monkeys run through off and on and break down some of the tree limbs. They go through for the fruits. I see them sometimes.”
Earlier this year Watson was given an award from Minister of Health Donville Innis and recently, he was again awarded for his outstanding community service after being nominated by his niece Susan Watson.
This Wesleyan Holiness Church member said he would encourage anyone who likes gardening, to “do the same”.
“I would encourage people to plant more; plant more fruits. That is what the land is there for,” advised Watson.
