Late Aurora artist’s project cared
for by those who knew and loved him
As spring-like weather finally appears in Nebraska, gardening brings the opportunity not only to grow new life, but to grow the memories and legacies of those who have passed. The plants and flowers can be arranged in a singular space to represent the spirit of those no longer with us.
Aurora locals Barbara and Britton Bailey are endeavoring to keep the essence of Ernie Ochsner’s love of nature alive in a garden in the north parking lot of the Alice Farr Library.
The late Ernie Ochsner was an artist, photographer, Alice Farr Library custodian, house painter, carpenter, founding director of the Hamilton County Food Pantry and board member of the Prairie Plains Resource Institute (PPRI). When he passed away in October of 2022, one of the many projects he left behind was the garden he tended at the library. It now serves as a tribute to the memory of this pillar of the local community.
“He loved the prairie, so I think it will be a wonderful tribute,” said Lynda Ochsner, Ernie’s wife of fifty years. “It just diversifies that whole area and makes it more beautiful.”
Ernie was born in 1944 in Isabel, S.D, and moved to Sutton and Lincoln in his childhood, according a biography on the Kiechel Fine Art website. In 1974, he moved to Aurora with his wife Lynda and daughter Elizabeth, working in his career as a self-educated painter. Some of his most famous local works include two murals in the Plainsmen Museum.
“(He was) very well recognized and admired within that artistic community,” Lynda said.
She stated that his art ranged from abstract subjects to the Midwestern landscapes that surrounded him every day.
“He started identifying with nature, loved the landscape here,” she detailed. “He loved the horizon, the huge sky (and) land below. I remember him saying nature is God’s will made manifest, that we should become stewards of creation and take care of it.”
His income, along with his wife’s teaching position, was able to support his family until his daughter entered college. He became a custodian at the library for 20 years.
“Then he took a master gardener’s class in the 90s,” Lynda recalled. “He decided at that point he was going to take that swath of land, a strip of land and develop it into a garden.”
Ernie would work for 15 years to grow and nurture that garden at the north end of the library’s parking lot.
“People admired it, loved that it brought a sense of beauty for people and I think that gave him joy,” Lynda related. “I think that gave him joy. I was the beneficiary of the beautiful flowers. Every now and then they would cut them and bring them home for me, which I never rejected.”
When Ernie’s health started to decline, some of his friends through PPRI helped him out, including the Baileys.
“It started with Jan Whitney (PPRI SOAR camp coordinator and publication editor) wanting to restore his garden, after he retired, it was kind of neglected,” Barbara said. “So she started ‘Friends of Ernie.’”
Friends of Ernie would help clear weeds and trees and revive the garden to its former condition in 2021. Ernie would advise and identify where plants should be located, thus continuing to help improve the garden.
The couple also asked their daughter Sarah, an educator at PPRI, to plant native prairie plants this past fall.
“We were there, but Ernie was unable to help at that time,” Bailey recalled. “I think it brought him great joy to know that somebody was going to sustain that and keep it (going).”
The plantings are marked by bright yellow flags where they will one day grow out of their native Nebraskan soil.
“It’ll take them a while to establish their root systems, so they establish that first and then they begin to grow,” Bailey explained. “They are growing now. This spring I can see evidence of quite a few of them are starting but they weren’t mature or large.”
After Ernie’s passing, the Baileys would continue to tend to the garden which is just across the street from their home.
“We didn’t really convene a large group again,” Barbara said. “It was easy for us to just go and maintain it whenever it needed something.”
Though the garden took weekly observance last year, the couple now goes about once a month, thanks in part to the library’s underground sprinkler system.
“We kind of watch over it for now,” Bailey stated. “If there’s anything that needs to be done I’m sure we can contact all those people again. They would be happy to help. For now, we don’t want others to work in the garden until those prairie plants were established.”
The garden has had a bit of tragedy as the sign that marked the area as Ernie’s Garden was knocked down and its metal posts broken a few weeks ago.
“My husband want to refurbish it and have better posts,” Bailey said. “Maybe choose a different place to put it.”
Besides that, both Barbara and Lynda said the garden will be a benefit to his memory and to the people of Aurora.
“I walk a lot and I think as people come up to go visit the library and they drive in they see that and I think people walking in the neighborhood, they appreciate that,” Lynda said. “I think it’ll be beautiful.”
“I think that it’s just one more aspect of his artistic self,” she continued. “He had a way of expressing his love for beauty through living plants and sharing that with others… People when they go into beauty and they see nature, surrounded by it I think it speaks to their soul, to their spirit and maybe changes their approach to life.”
Barbara expressed a similar sentiment.
“I think the garden is a beautiful and colorful thing that he created, just like his art,” she said.