WAUSAU − For 30 to 35 years, Robert Monk III worked to transform a former cow pasture near Northcentral Technical College into his own vision of a botanical paradise.
Monk’s gardens featured acres of trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables, a pond, fountains, waterfalls, bridges and miles of trails, according to a Wausau Daily Herald article about a garden walk that ran in 2000.
Monk would decide to donate his garden to a nonprofit group, Robert W. Monk Gardens Inc., so that people always would be able to enjoy it. The group named the garden after Monk, Robert W. Monk Botanical Gardens. It would later shorten the name to Monk Botanical Gardens.
This week, the current Monk Botanical Gardens Board of Directors decided to remove the Monk name entirely, changing it to Wausau Botanic Gardens. Monk donated 19 acres of his property and created the organization. It was a generous gift and the gardens would not be there without the gift, said Darcie Howard, executive director of the newly named Wausau Botanic Gardens.
The group purchased the other 10 acres from Monk’s family after Robert Monk and his wife died, Howard said. After the initial donation, it’s taken the sweat, tears and donation money of community volunteers to continue to develop the gardens. It’s been the Wausau community who have done that for the past 21 years, and the gardens belong to Wausau. They are a Wausau asset and the new name, Wausau Botanic Gardens, reflect that, Howard said.
“Mr. Monk’s amazing gift and vision are not going anywhere,” Howard said. “They’ll stay shining on our website for all to see.”
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In a private meeting with members of the Monk family, the Board said they would make sure to honor Monk with a video in the Welcome Center. Howard told the Wausau Daily Herald there will also be a memorial for Robert Monk for everyone to remember him. But his granddaughter, Katie Monk, isn’t sure.
“Grandma and Grandpa (Monk’s) graves are there,” Katie Monk said. “I’ve gone there to visit them when the grass is waist high, so I don’t have a lot of confidence.”
Katie Monk said her grandfather always used to like to say, “When someone plants a tree, they don’t plant a tree for themselves, they plant it for someone in the future.” Now, future generations will never know who planted the trees for them, Katie Monk said.
Robert Monk became a member of the horticultural society. He traveled to botanical gardens in larger cities, such as Green Bay, Madison and Milwaukee to look at other botanical gardens to get ideas for the one he was creating, according to a Nov. 20, 2004, Wausau Daily Herald article.
“I thought, well, maybe Wausau would be receptive to that sort of thing,” Monk said in the story.
One day, around 2002, Monk saw a woman and her daughter having a picnic on his property and went to ask who they were, according to the 2004 story. She was Darla Zastrow, a lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Marathon County’s biological sciences department. Monk told her about the vision he had for an educational facility that would be a place everyone could come and learn about gardening. He wanted to see a public meeting place and conservatory with walls of glass.
Zastrow loved the idea and told the school’s dean, Jim Veninga, about it. Veninga also loved the idea. That was when Robert W. Monk Gardens were born in 2003.
It would take a couple of years before Robert Monk was comfortable enough with the progress of the nonprofit Robert W. Monk Gardens Inc. to turn over the property. He did it in 2005.
A brochure from the botanical gardens credits the hard work of the volunteers who started working at the gardens after the donation and doesn’t mention Robert Monk, Katie Monk said.
Katie Monk said her father and uncle helped to build the pond on the property. She remembers going to her grandfather’s place to help plant trees and flowers.
The original plantings of flowers and trees were done by Robert Monk’s family, Howard said. The bridge could never be used because it was dangerous. The pond needs to be redone this year, she said.
The gardens currently get 64,000 visitors a year, Howard said. She believes the current gardens and changes would make Robert Monk happy. Whenever the gardens welcome visitors or lead tours, the staff keeps his story alive and flourishing, Howard said. Howard said she thinks Robert Monk would be happy and proud of the community.
Phase one of a three-phase project, a visitor and education center, will be completed this year, according to a Friday news release from Wausau Botanic Gardens. This season the gardens will also replace a secure fence around some of the property and add a state-of the-art security system, create a Ginseng Garden in partnership with Hsu’s Ginseng Enterprises, establish a traditional English Garden, construct a gatehouse and parking lot, make all main trails accessible and complete Sara’s Storybook Garden.
But Katie Monk knows the name that honored her grandfather’s hard work and dreams won’t be there.
“I’m devastated,” she said. “I can’t put into words how devastating it is.”
The Botanic Gardens website had already rebranded to reflect the new name on Friday.
Contact Karen Madden at 715-345-2245 or kmadden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KMadden715, Instagram @kmadden715 or Facebook at www.facebook.com/karen.madden.33.
This article originally appeared on Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: Family devastated after Monk named removed from Wausau botanical gardens