Sunnyslope Rock Garden – Phoenix, Arizona
Grover Cleveland Thompson was born January 1st, 1892, the first of seven children of a rancher born in the Oregon desert town of Fossil. In his early twenties he married and had two daughters, farmed, lost two fingers at a lumber mill. During the Depression he and his family moved to Seattle. His wife Fay died of cancer at age 44, and a daughter Lucille just a week later.
Grover and his second wife Nancy moved to Phoenix around 1953. They bought a patch of scrubland desert in the barely-developed Sunnyslope neighborhood. At first they lived in a trailer on the property. Grover worked as a heavy equipment operator for a few years before fully retiring in 1956. In his free time he began decorating their property with rock-encrusted walls and sculptures made of concrete. A visit to the Peterson Rock Garden in Bend, Oregon inspired him. He scavenged a city dump at what is now Sky Harbor Airport for colorful broken glass and pottery to embellish the walls. He mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow, brought right into the house to add the water.
Thompson grew the garden in front of the little homemade house by stages over the next two decades to incorporate nearly 50 sculptures, windmills and fountains flowing into a small fish pond. Desert rocks with subtle shades of minerals cover the low cement walls, while arches and pedestals are decorated with bright shards of Fiestaware pottery gleaming in the desert sun. Plastic Halloween masks made easy molds for sculpting faces of statuary and busts to populate the creation. One area is meant to be a miniature version of Jerome, an Arizona mining town perched on the side of a mountain. A six-foot mosaic-covered Space Needle commemorates the 1962 World's Fair and Grover's former home. Throughout the garden, low walls and terraces provide cubby holes for miniature houses and figures.
The garden would likely have disappeared and been forgotten after Thompson's death in the fall of 1977 except for a lucky happenstance. New York art teacher and mosaic artist Marion Blake was visiting her parents in the area. Her father noticed that the garden was for sale. She packed up her New York apartment and bought the crooked little house and garden from Thompson's daughter Cloydene with the promise to preserve the art environment. For over four decades she has cared for the rock garden, protected the fragile sculptures from storms, repaired the cracked cement and fought to bring attention to Thompson's creation. Correspondence in the SPACES archive detail her years of advocacy for landmark protection of the garden. In December 2024, after decades of effort, the Sunnyslope Rock Garden was finally designated by the city of Phoenix as a historic site worthy of protection.
Sunnyslope Rock Garden is often open to visitors one day per month, or visible from outside the fence.
"Curator restoring Sunnyslope rock garden," Ryan Konig, Arizona Republic, July 31, 1991
"Sunnyslope's hidden treasure," Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic, March 7, 1993
"Phoenix designates Sunnyslope Rock Garden as a historic place," Taylor Seely, Arizona Republic, January 4, 2025
Back to other Art Environments