REMEMBERING KEL HARRIS

On Friday, August 9, surrounded by her friends, family, and flowers, we will say goodbye to Kel Harris, who died on July 31. We are heartbroken by this sudden loss.

Since Kel joined Ucross as Horticulture Manager in 2019, she brought color to our campus and personality to our team. Quick with a joke, she loved to share her passion for travel, jazz, and — above all else — flowers. Her vibrant horticultural design throughout our grounds inspired more than 500 artists, writers, composers, and choreographers from around the world, as well as thousands of visitors to the Ucross Art Gallery, The Park at Ucross, and the Raymond Plank Center.

Please join us in remembering our colleague and friend through this profile in 2021, featuring Kel beaming with her favorite white daisies. 

MEET KEL HARRIS
Published July 10, 2021 (original post here)

Ever since she was a small girl, Ucross Horticulture Manager Kel Harris has wanted to spend her life surrounded by flowers. And so, she has — tending small home gardens in her youth, attending floral design school, working for her family’s former business in Buffalo (Grannie’s Bloomers), overseeing famed artist Neltje's gardens, and more. Today, she is in her 37th year of growing a greenhouse crop.

“My dreams have come true,” Kel told us on a recent morning, as she surveyed one of her vast, vibrant gardens on the Ucross grounds. She and her hard-working crew care for all of our plants, from the native grass landscaping by the writers’ studios to the carrots grown for the artists’ dinner plates.

Kel’s life follows the seasons. She is happiest right now, in summer, when she gets to work outdoors in the warm sunshine all day, planting, weeding, watering, and repeating. Autumn has its charm too: She likes to clean up, to make way for the new. During winter, she hibernates indoors, dreaming of sunnier, greener days as she plans the many landscapes of Ucross, which she changes every year. In spring, Kel spends long days in the greenhouse, watering, pinching, and transplanting.

“It’s so rewarding,” Kel said. “You work so hard — you take care of the plants, you weed them and water them and deadhead them — and then they perform for you.”

The next time you visit the Park at Ucross, take a stroll through the gardens, which are open to the public, and enjoy Kel’s living art form. And if you see a spritely woman gardening, joyful among the flowers, dressed to match in bright colors down to her rainbow toes, be sure to say hello. 

We are accepting donations for the Kel Harris Flower Fund, which will support a special memorial that we will unveil on her birthday, September 19. You may contribute online here, or mail your gift to Ucross Foundation, 30 Big Red Lane, Clearmont, WY, 82835.

Please click here to read Kel's obituary, share a memory on the tribute wall, and find details on the funeral services on Friday, August 9.

We send our love to Kel's friends and family. All are welcome to remember Kel in The Park at Ucross, open to the public daily from dawn to dusk. There, you can sit among the flowers in the Johansen Memorial Gardens, steps away from the interdenominational Ucross Chapel, and experience Kel's artistry.