Artist-built Environment | Concrete environment | Restored/preserved  -  Open to the public

"I wanted to bring the mountains home with me.  They are beautiful to me. I love rocks."

(Grassroots Art Center)

Florence Deeble was a school teacher by profession in Lincoln, Osborne and Russell counties for 42 years.  The Deeble family homesteaded in the Lucas area.  Florence lived in the home of her parents, Charles and Edith Barr Deeble.  She recalls her family thinking of Lucas as their ‘Camelot’.

Miss Deeble and her roommate, Christine Klontz, spent part of their summers away from teaching at their cabin at Estes Park, Colorado.  They would always bring rocks home in the trunk of their car.  She loved being outside working in the yard in the summer months. Florence called herself a gardener, not an artist.  In her younger days, she had a wide variety of flowers in her rock garden, and it was her showplace.

Since 1935, Miss Deeble creatd miniature "postal card" scenes of the places she had visited or read about in books.  Some of these included Mount Rushmore, Estes Park Conference Camp, and the Tetons.  Florence worked the last 10 years of her life creating tributes to the Lucas City Band, founding fathers, a monument to her father and another to her brother, Burl, who served in WWII.  She enjoyed visitors to her garden and carefully kept a guest book listing everyone who visited.

Other folk art within walking distance of Florence Deeble's Rock Garden includes the Garden of Eden, World's Largest Collection of World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things, Grassroots Art Center, and the Garden of Isis,

Florence has passed away, but the Kansas Grassroots Art Center now uses the house for artists in residence.  For tour info, contact Grassroots Art Center  (785) 525-6118

Since 2002, the first floor of Florence's home has been turned into the Garden of Isis.

Credit: Grassroots Art Center  http://www.grassrootsart.net

Creator: Florence Deeble: 1900-1999
Creation date: 1935-1999

129 Fairview
Lucas, KS
785-525-6118
http://www.grassrootsart.net