How Dave’s Rock Garden became an Encinitas landmark
What began as one man cleaning up a patch of land near Moonlight Beach has grown into a colorful community garden filled with more than 10,000 hand-painted rocks
On a sloping parcel of state-owned land two blocks from Moonlight Beach, where the breeze carries the scent of salt and eucalyptus, a small miracle has been unfolding for more than a decade. It did not begin with a plan, a grant, or a committee. It began with one man standing alone on B Street.
In 2015, longtime Encinitas resident Dave Dean found himself in an unexpected standoff with the city. The stretch of curb between Second and Third on B Street, long used for parking by beachgoers, had suddenly become a ticket trap. There were no signs and no red paint, just citations.
When Dean asked why, both an officer and the Sheriff’s Department said they were “doing what they were told.” For a week he stood on the curb, warning drivers not to park there, and gathering 1,287 signatures, which he took to the City Council.
The city relented, eventually painting the curb red. But with the parking issue resolved, Dean found he no longer had anyone to talk to, so he started picking up trash. Then he pulled weeds. And when the weeds were gone, he planted drought-tolerant succulents.
The city issued a cease-and-desist order, giving him two weeks to remove everything. Dean did not immediately respond. He waited. A month passed. Nothing happened, so he returned, working at night by flashlight, determined to make the space “so nice they wouldn’t be able to take it away,” he says.
Today, that once-empty lot is Dave’s Rock Garden, a community landmark visited by locals, tourists, surfers, schoolchildren, yogis, and travelers from more than 130 countries.
What began as a patch of weeds has become a living mosaic of more than 10,000 hand-painted rocks. The first arrived without ceremony — a stone with a heart painted in the center, left at the end of one of Dean’s winding pathways, which he was slowly lining with stones gathered from the beach four or five at a time. “That’s when the magic began,” Dean says. “I thought instead of one painted rock, one day there will be a thousand rocks painted by a thousand people in a thousand colors.”
On the back of the heart rock it says, “Candace, from Arizona.” Candace Jasper Jessup was staying next door at the Moonlight Beach Motel, watching Dean as he worked. And now, a decade later, the garden also includes rocks from Jessup’s daughter and granddaughter.
Another early contributor was artist Svetlana Kozak, who lived nearby and passed the garden every day on her morning run. After stopping to ask if she could paint a rock, Kozak returned over the weekend with her husband and friends, adding even more rocks to the collection.
Kozak, originally from Russia, shared pictures of the garden online. A woman in Holland who followed her posts mailed Dean two rocks painted with tulips. She also turned the photos into postcards that were sold by Dutch schoolchildren to benefit Ukrainian children displaced by the war with Russia.
Today, the garden holds rocks painted by people ages 3 to 102, from every U.S. state and nearly every corner of the world. Some are whimsical, some devotional, some political, and some deeply personal. One was painted by a five-year-old girl with cerebral palsy that bears the words “Hope is a waking dream.”
The garden has continued to evolve, mirroring Dean’s own blend of practicality and imagination. He trimmed overgrown shrubs into Dr. Seuss-like trees to create more space. He installed a Little Free Library box after partnering with the San Diego Council on Literacy and the president of the San Diego Country Library system. Most recently, he and others completed a mural that wraps around the garden’s back wall, depicting the area and those who helped shape the garden.
At 68, Dean still works “full throttle” — in commercial real estate, painting houses for friends, volunteering at American Legion Post 416, and serving on the Parks & Recreation Commission. He lives in Leucadia and spends an hour in the garden most evenings, and several hours each day over the weekend.
“I love the opportunity to meet people in this garden,” he says. “It’s mind-boggling how excited some are.”
The land remains part of Moonlight Beach State Park Reserve, managed by the city. Administrations have come and gone, but the garden has endured. It is, in the truest sense, a community creation — a place where strangers leave small pieces of themselves, trusting that someone will see them.
Dean never envisioned building a landmark. He simply made something beautiful, and the world responded. davesrockgarden.com
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