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SALT LAKE CITY — Family and friends paid tribute to Peter Lassig Monday as he was laid to rest. The man who was the head gardener on Temple Square for more than 33 years passed away last weekend at 77.
For decades, millions of people have experienced what Lassig envisioned and what he and his team created.
In a 2003 interview with Lassig, he talked about how filling the garden was like creating a sculpture or a symphony.
"I'm crazy about tulips," he said. "I have to say, they are probably my favorite. They remind me of a ballerina twirling in a tutu."
Lassig began his tenure on Temple Square as an apprentice before becoming the designer, manager of the gardens and Christmas lights. He devoted 45 years to the grounds, overseeing a staff of 40 in addition to hundreds of volunteers.
"We plant 165,000 flowers every six months, and these 165,000 flowers are distributed to 250 different flower beds," Lassig said during his 2003 interview.
His knowledge about the 725 varieties of plants was complemented by his design skills, which were award-winning.
His wife, Janet, who was a member of his gardening team, said he always thought about representing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints well. She said he wanted everyone to have a feeling of peace when they walked through the gardens and the lights.
"He knew he was setting the stage for the temple," Janet Lassig said. "As soon as you step onto Temple Square, there is a different feeling. He said, 'There must be organization, and it must reflect the Creator, our Father.'"
Lassig passed his love of nature on to his children. His daughter, Rachel Wertheimer, said that is her favorite memory.
"We all love camping, hiking, canoeing and just being outside with plants and flowers. Any plant or tree or flower, he could give you the entire history — its name, its Latin name. … He made it sound sort of like a soap opera. This beautiful, passionate, alive thing," Wertheimer said.
Clarissa Lassig Anderson said her father had the same passion for ballroom dancing as he did for gardening and nature. As a hiker, he was hard to keep up with.
"He was just so energetic and full of life about the whole experience that he would almost forget about how fast he was going," Anderson said. "The only way to slow him down, really, was to ask him about a plant."
Lassig loved flowers as a child and started his lengthy career as a gardening volunteer on Temple Square when he was 15. He returned to the grounds in 1958 after serving an LDS mission in Japan.
His son, Aaron, said something remarkable happened during his father's time there. He fell in love with the gardens.
"At that time, missions were … two and a half years long (for missionaries serving in a foreign country)," Aaron Lassig said. "He got special permission from the prophet at the time to stay an extra six months in Japan to study Japanese gardens."
Peter Lassig received a bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture and field botany from BYU in 1967 and later completed three years of graduate school in landscape architecture at Utah State University. He and his first wife, Sylvia, had eight children. Following her death, Lassig married Janet Boyer McMaster in 1991.
His family and friends described him as a humble man who always gave credit to the Lord.
"His main thing was to draw attention to the Creator, not the gardeners," Janet said. "And his whole life he wanted to glorify the Creator."
Lassig believed that all people, no matter their culture, feel a natural connection to life that springs from the earth. Millions of visitors experienced that with nature as his pallet.
Even after retirement, Lassig continued to garden at his home in Rose Park. Though his personal garden was much smaller than what he had been used to, it was no less important or beautiful.
For Lassig, family, faith and flowers demonstrated the complete cycle of life that brought beauty and lasting joy.
And all he ever wanted to be called was "the gardener."
