Tell me about yourself
I’m Dave Dean and I do this because it’s a manner of showing up and doing good. I grew up in LA and now I live in Solana Beach, close to San Diego. I love the beach and the kind people. The beach, 200m down the street is the crown jewel of the city, but before this garden existed, this was the city’s dirtiest lot – covered with trash.

What makes you happy today?
Seeing everybody enjoying the garden.

How has the garden changed the neighborhood?
It brings everybody together every day. Maybe 200 or 300 people a day walk through the garden. I’ve also got visitors from over 115 different countries, ranging from the ages of 1 to 101.

What makes you optimistic about the future?
That so many people from all around the world come here who want love, peace and happiness.  I think it is kind of a sacred garden because of all the people that come together. One row I call ‘believers row’. I put  stones with a message from Jews, Christians, Mormons, Catholists, Buddists and all other religions in that row.

I have a story about a German girl. I was here on a Sunday morning working by myself and that girls comes walking through the garden kinda timid. And I say ‘enjoy the garden, feel at home’. And she tells ‘ok, I will’ and she goes on telling me: “I was here already last night”. And I ask her “When you were here last night why are you back again this morning?”. She answers: “I have to be back in Munich tonight, and I came back to get inspiration. Two years ago my mother came down with brain cancer and she got paralyzed on the right side of her body. But she was always right-handed. When I’ll be back and when my mom starts to get better and  goes for a walk with dad in the morning; I’m gonna look for rocks and I’ll give her paints and brushes, so she can learn how to paint with her left hand and when she paints rocks I’m gonna put them in my apartment”. So because of this garden a lady in Germany is learning to paint with her left hand and get better in life. This makes me happy.

What is your favorite stone?
That would be the very first rock. What happened: I was carrying back rocks back from the beach to make pathways in this lot. One day a lady had painted one rock in black and white. I looked at it and said ‘that’s it’. Instead of one black and white rock one day I’ve got a thousand rocks of a thousand colors by a thousand people. So, I invited my friends out on a Saturday to paint rocks, then we invited people going to the beach to come and paint with us and now we have over 7,000 painted rocks of a thousand colors by more than a thousand people.

Dave Dean on Instagram: instagram.com/davesrockgarden