All gardens are special, but some more so for what they are than for what is planted in them.

At Vanadium Woods Village, a retirement community in Scott, a small garden was planned and planted by two employees with the residents in mind.

High school senior Jesse Bonincontro of Oakdale, who is a service employee, and Jane Ballo, who with her husband Kenneth are resident managers at the independent living community, put their heads together and revamped a small garden space, making it a peaceful place to sit and read or just come and watch nature.

Now it's a favorite spot for residents to relax and worthy of an honorable mention in the Great Gardens Contest sponsored by the Post-Gazette and Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania.

Jesse, 17, approached Mrs. Ballo about the garden, which he hoped to use as his Eagle Scout project.

"There was a garden there before," she says, "[but] everything needed redone, everything needed re-painting. It needed taken care of."

Mrs. Ballo liked the idea and took on the project. She chose the plants, which are a cheerful mix of annuals and perennials, including daisies, daylilies, salvia, marigolds, trumpet vine, ornamental grasses, clematis, monarda, zinnias and butterfly bush.

Jesse, his parents and other scouts from his troop showed up on May 23 and did the work. They repainted the benches with bright colors and redid the plantings. They also installed a rubber mulch walkway that is soft on residents' feet but can also handle wheelchairs.

"It took four or five hours," says Mrs. Ballo.

Even though the space was close to the building, Mrs. Ballo wanted the residents to feel as if they were enveloped in the garden, small though it might be.

"They can be sitting in there and not see anything around them but the bushes," she says.

The benches have also been placed so that visitors can enjoy the sunset.

For his part, Jesse has gotten quite a number of favorable comments, both from the residents and the children of the residents. He still does some maintenance, deadheading flowers and such, but he mostly credits the resident managers for keeping the space tidy.

And the residents seem to love it.

"It's another place for them to go rather than being in the building," says Mrs. Ballo. "They can go out and visit with relatives and sit on the rocking chairs. Or go and read a book.

"It's a quiet, peaceful place."