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Peter Carlsen, the gardener of Children’s Hospital Boston’s historic Prouty Garden, is a popular guy in the summer. As he weeds the flowerbeds and collects loose leaves that flutter about the serene green space, he’s inundated by patients, families and employees beseeching him to spill his horticultural secrets.
After caring for the hospital’s garden for 28 years, Carlsen knows the quirks and personalities of all the different species. He can point out which plants flourish easily on their own and which need extra TLC. Yet true to his understated and humble character, Carlsen says he knows “a little bit about plants.” Before he was a man of the soil, Carlsen was in the United States Army and served in the Vietnam War. When he returned to civilian life, he got a job at a grass-cutting company. “I was looking for something, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he recalls. But he found long hours toiling outdoors surprisingly enjoyable and soon took advantage of the G.I. Bill, which paid for him to pursue a degree from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “They taught me about bugs and soil and all kinds of stuff,” he says.
Since its opening, the Prouty Garden has remained almost exactly the same. In 1956, Olive Prouty, an American novelist, and her husband gave an endowment for the garden, with the stipulation that the land would never be built on and remain a tranquil space for patients and families to visit. Carlsen takes this decree seriously, and is quite particular about the way the garden is maintained. “I’m sort of a fussy guy,” he says. He worries about who will tend to it after he retires. Carlsen left Children’s for one year, many years ago, and his memory of what it looked like when he returned still haunts him. “All the workers did was cut the grass,” he says. “It took me about a year to get it all back to how it should be.”
Twice a year, Carlsen prunes the entire garden—once in early spring and then again in the middle of the summer. “A big flush of growth happens in May,” he says. “The hedge usually puts on six inches of growth in four weeks, so that gets it out of shape pretty fast.” In the warm months, when he’s not pruning, it’s very likely he’s raking or cutting the grass. “I’m always raking,” he says. During the winter months, Carlsen helps plow the snow and de-ice the sidewalks.
For Carlsen, seeing how much patients and families enjoy the garden is the ultimate reward for his hard work. “When families tell me the garden helped their son or daughter, it really puts a smile on my face,” he says. He speculates that the garden plays a role in their healing process, saying, “I think that’s why Ms. Prouty wanted this.” Lucky patients can receive a special gift from Carlsen: a fragrant piece of the hospital to take home with them. “When I have little seedlings from the ginko tree and birch tree, I pot them,” he says. “Sometimes, I’ll give people a seedling to plant at their own house.” Taking care of the garden might grow monotonous to some people—the inevitability that the grass will always grow back and the flowers will need weeding again—but not Carlsen. “I don’t mind a bit,” he says. “This garden is like my second home.”
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