When people dream of walking through familiar homes and discovering grand rooms, it’s a good sign, dream analysts say. New rooms symbolize positive growth and change.

When you first see the Moore-Turner Heritage Gardens, which will open to the public for the first time Saturday, you feel as if you’ve walked into a dream. A piece of lost history has emerged from the hillside on Spokane’s lower South Hill. But this is no dream. Lynn Mandyke, director of the Corbin Arts Center and prime mover behind the restoration, says of the garden: “It’s been gracefully asleep and now it’s awake again.”

It took a decade to wake it up. The restored garden – manicured and serene – doesn’t hint at the mess, expense, controversies and inevitable ups and downs that accompany any worthwhile civic endeavor. Yet people and groups persevered, especially Mandyke, Spokane Parks and Recreation workers and dozens of volunteers from groups such as Spokane Preservation Advocates. Now Spokane has one more space of beauty to showcase.

The garden provided sanctuary from 1889 to 1932 for two prominent families – first the Moores, then the Turners. With the scent of lilacs and roses in the air around them, the families and their guests walked the garden’s spacious paths, shared gossip beneath a pagoda-style teahouse and paused by the garden’s manmade pond and waterfall.

The garden was abandoned during an economic catastrophe – the Great Depression – and the hillside’s trees, plants and weeds reclaimed it. When weakened trees collapsed during a natural catastrophe – the ice storm of 1996 – Mandyke discovered the vestigial garden. Restoration efforts began. Some days, the task felt overwhelming. Neighborhood skateboarders, for instance, used the 8-foot deep empty pond for maneuvers, and they complained about being displaced.

The garden might never have awakened from its 75-year slumber were it not for a $1.2 million donation by Myrtle Woldson who lives nearby. But she withdrew an offer of another $2 million for ongoing maintenance when trees she wished removed remained. Maintenance money will be a continuing struggle, but here’s one good idea already under consideration: Rent out the garden for weddings. Charge a competitive price. People will pay it.

The garden climbs 120 vertical feet up the steep hillside. Because the garden is on Spokane’s and Washington’s historic registers, it must retain “historical integrity” which means no handrails on its paths and staircases. So the gardens force you to watch your step, slow down. As Spokane booms, and technology trails us everywhere, the garden will thus remain a sanctuary, a grand gift from Spokane’s past.