Memorial garden blooms at last

PHOTO: Environmental Club members plant flowers in the Thong Hy Huynh memorial garden in the colors of the Vietnamese flag.

By Mattias RowenBale,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff––

Flowers finally returned to the Thong Hy Huynh memorial garden on Nov. 10 as over a dozen students planted fuchsia, yarrow and more. 

Ever since the transition to distance learning left the garden neglected, the Davis High Environmental Club, led by teacher Sherri Sandburg, has been working hard to restore the memorial. 

“It’s just so important to keep this as a vibrant, alive place. And it’s just been sad to see some of the struggles it’s had over the years,” Sandburg said. 

The red and yellow flowers planted by Environmental Club are meant to symbolize the Vietnamese flag, as the garden memorializes Vietnamese student Thong Hy Huynh who was killed on the Davis High campus in 1983. 

Following the racially motivated hate crime, former DHS teacher Grace Kim organized the construction of the garden in Huynh’s memory. 

“(We’re planting today to) memorialize that student but also kind of speak on the recent resurgence of Asian American hate crimes that happened because of the pandemic,” Environmental Club president Jered Umphress said. 

Unfortunately, the garden has been in a state of disrepair in recent years, and the Nov. 10 restoration was badly needed. 

When students and teachers left campus in 2020, bermuda grass took over the garden. The remaining flowers died when irrigation was turned off in the summer of 2021, and club members had to cover the planter box with black plastic during the summer of 2022 to solarize it and kill off the invasive grass. 

However, the memorial garden struggled even before the pandemic, particularly with irrigation. 

“When I first started teaching here, it was very sad because every year to commemorate this planter they would plant a tree, but there was no irrigation connected to the planter and so every year then the tree would die. Oh my god, that was really awful,” Sandburg said.

Originally, Sandburg declined to join the efforts to maintain the garden, because she knew they were fruitless without proper irrigation. It wasn’t until a DHS principal had the surrounding cement dug up to reccont the irrigation system that Sandburg and the Environemtal Club began taking care of the planter. 

“I’m a little worried that after we go through all this effort that irrigation is gonna continue to be a problem … (A maintenance person) came two days ago and he still hasn’t turned it on,” Sandburg said. “We’ve got drough tolerant plants, but they do need some water.”

Luckily, it seems as though there is renewed motivation surrounding the memorial, and Sandburg and Umphress are cautiously optimistic about its future. 

“I’m working on a commission … (and there is) talk about refurbishing the benches or replacing them, as well as adding art (on surrounding walls),” Umphress said. 

According to Umphress, there may be signage added to bring attention to what the garden represents, as well as murals placed nearby to celebrate and showcase diverity. 

“I’m hoping that this can be something that really celebrates diversity,” Sandburg said.