Ever since she could drive, maybe even longer than that, Teresa Wentworth can remember picking daffodils, some from the side of the road, to lay at her father’s and nephews’ graves at Evergreen Memorial Gardens.
She still does, she said, but now she picks and lays thousands more to set on the graves of strangers as part of an annual tradition for her and her family.
On Sunday, in the seventh year she has done that, Wentworth and friends and family set out more than 3,200 daffodils on grave sites.
It started several years ago, after a visit to the graves of her father and nephews, she said. She and her kids noticed how so few of the other graves had any flowers.
When they came back the next year, they had a few hundred flowers to place on other stones, and some extra help.
“It’s just kind of progressed every year,” Wentworth said.
One couple, whom she declined to fully name, provided about 2,600 of the flowers.
“Without them this would not even be possible. Without Dick and Nora, we would have had barely enough to complete Baby Haven,” she said, referring to the section for babies.
Typically, Wentworth has about 10 people who join her every spring to pick and lay flowers, and they start at Baby Haven and keep moving.
“There’s kids buried here whose parents are long gone, just reading the dates, and we don’t know if they have family or anything. So once a year we make sure that every grave, even the unmarked ones,” gets a flower, she said.
In the seven years she’s done this, people have tracked her down to thank her. One couple lived out of state and couldn’t come to set flowers on their boy’s grave.
The mother sent a thank-you card, Wentworth said, “because she knows now, once a year, he gets flowers.”
The thought that the next grave gets no visitors or attention is heartbreaking, she said, and motivating.
“Because you give this one a flower, that one a flower — when do you stop?” she said. “When you run out of flowers, everyone you walk by gets left out and that just kills me.”
Wentworth’s daughter, Mackenzie, said she’s joined her mother for just about every year. It just keeps growing.
“We realized, after the first year, ‘Oh, we could go a little longer,’ ” Mackenzie said.
“I love it,” she said, even if they’re out there in the pouring rain, which happened some years.
Megan Field, the vice president of crematory operations with Evergreen Memorial Gardens, said she met Teresa Wentworth after helping with the funeral services for Teresa’s stepfather and father-in-law.
There, it slipped that Teresa was the one who had been laying out all those flowers every spring.
“It’s always been a surprise when we show up to work and see that somebody’s been placing daffodils,” Field said. “And then we hear from families, how much they appreciate it, and we never know who to thank.”
Now they do, Field said, and so she joined in the effort Sunday.
“It’s such a sweet gesture, it’s nice that people still are out there who have caring hearts, that want to do good for perfect strangers, and it’s just neat to be a part of it,” she said.
There are about 40 acres of developed space at the cemetery, and Teresa Wentworth said she’d one day like to see a flower placed for each person at the cemetery.
“I would like to see it grow to where we literally start at Baby Haven and just work all the way down,” she said, referring to the children’s section.
Anyone with space to grow, flowers to pick, bulbs to donate or time to help is welcome to contact her, she said. Her email address is teresawentworth11@gmail.com.
