Less than 24 hours after the Route 91 mass shooting, the phrase “Vegas Strong” began spreading in news coverage and across social media.

It was a quick way to express resilience to the violence we had been subjected to on October 1, 2017. With these two words came images of hands reaching out, white crosses and flowers and people embracing one another, picking each other up after we’d been knocked down.

Less than a week after the shooting, officials and community members gathered on the first Friday of the month at the site of the newly erected Community Healing Garden—a quarter-acre plot at the corner of Charleston Boulevard and Casino Center Drive, six miles north of the Strip site where the shooting took place. And on October 6, 2017, three days after construction began, people joined hands for the garden’s dedication.

“We all were just so overwhelmed [with] that need to do something, to touch something, to help, whatever that meant,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman recalls. “It was a unique moment for a unique, beautiful group of people we lost, and a tribute to the community that was so sensitive and loving [in] that very tragic moment.”

In keeping with tradition, the garden again will provide a setting for the city’s annual remembrance ceremony this October 1, when city officials will read the names and light candles for those who died as a result of the shooting. This year, the city will give families a newly published book, which contains “a page devoted to each one of [those] we lost,” Goodman says.

Las Vegas police have updated the death toll, originally set at 58, to 60, to include two people who died of their injuries in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The number 58 remains a symbol, however, and is maintained in the garden design and messaging.

The garden’s design was actually drawn up on a napkin in a matter of minutes by co-creators Jay Pleggenkuhle and Daniel Perez of Stonerose Landscapes. The morning after the tragedy, those two locals began to feel the shock waves in the community, and redirected their grief into the project.

“In 20 minutes, the design of the garden was channeled through us,” Pleggenkuhle is quoted in the book Healing Las Vegas, published in 2019. “People gathered on a dusty lot. Materials and donations started to appear. Together, hundreds of people planted trees and flowers … built pathways and a remembrance wall.”

Donations and more than 400 volunteers helped complete the garden, Goodman says. Today, the remembrance wall and 58 trees bear ornaments, photos and messages from loved ones and the community paying respects.

A central “Tree of Life” donated by entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, branches out from its heart-shaped planter, providing shade to a patch of green turf and free-standing walls adorned with a water feature, images and plaques listing the names of those who died.

“In a painful situation, love can be extremely healing,” says volunteer Brenda Rodriguez, who helped build the garden’s irrigation system. She remembers that “people from all walks of life” showed up for the build, promoting just that.

Rodriguez, who has lived in Las Vegas for nearly 50 years and works as a horticulturist at a Strip property, brought her teenage daughter Vanessa and her daughter’s friend to the garden build. They worked for 10 hours until midnight on the first night, she recalls, followed up by two 16-hour days.

“It was an opportunity to help, so why not?” says Vanessa, now 20. “At one point it became a competition with my friend, of who could lift more rocks,” she says.

While it was a welcome distraction from the Route 91 aftermath, the Healing Garden build also reminded them that there can be grace amid such a tragedy. Witnessing the “outpouring and turnout from the community” was part of the beginning of her healing process, Rodriguez says.

“I felt as though I was helping create something that would provide a space for people to come and heal and express their grief, feel their pain and shed it and find hope,” she says. “Perhaps, for some people who came there, this allowed them to discharge all the negativity that had built up from this event—the pain, the anger, the frustration—and then turn around and regenerate positive energy, for building.”

Rodriguez views the community garden as a extension of stewardship for the natural environment—and for fellow humans. “Being helpful, being kind, showing love, showing caring and consideration for others, not just people, but all living things,” is one of the best ways to facilitate healing and carry on the message of Vegas Strong, she says.

Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!