No one can quite explain the three-dozen plants in the swimming pool atrium. They just materialized during the 40 years since the pool was built.

Jonathan Richardson, who tends the tropical menagerie, says he knows the provenance of the 10-foot Norfolk pine. That came as a donation from an office of a local grocery store, along with a new, bigger pot to put it in.

Some plants may have come from classrooms and offices in the adjacent Haines School, but other, smaller ones appear mysteriously in winter then disappear in the spring, as summer residents surreptitiously use Richardson and the warm, humid room as a plant-sitter.

“There’s a variety of new ones. This winter, a bunch of new plants appeared,” Richardson said. “A lot of small ones on the windowsill, I don’t know their story, but they’re okay.”

Richardson, who retired here from Tennessee, insists he’s not a plant person. That’s his wife, who has more than 32 houseplants, just counting the ones in their Lutak Road living room.

But in 2015, Richardson was in the atrium during an early meeting of Friends of the Pool when the discussion bogged down in the minutiae of forming a nonprofit organization. “Look,” he said. “I’ll just take care of the plants.”

It wasn’t a small job. Most were root-bound, many with browning leaves and aphids and encrusted with the chemical residue of treated water. With help from his wife and daughter, he re-potted them all with new soil, using a hoist attached to the ceiling to extract one that was stuck in its pot.

Two umbrella trees – one about 12 feet tall and nearing the atrium’s vault ceiling – now sit in the largest pots sold in Haines, he said. “Fortunately, that one’s not trying to get any taller. It seems to know.”

Richardson regularly hauls about 25 gallons of well water to the pool, watering more than once a week during occasional warm summers when the atrium really heats up. He trims back plants that become top-heavy and adds a little fertilizer to struggling ones.

On a recent visit he gazed philosophically at one that had been reduced to a brown stalk. “I was kind of fond of this plant, but it got destroyed by children.”

Separated from the pool by a section of glass wall, the atrium is nearly ideal for tropical plants, Richardson said, but there can be issues. When the pool was rebuilt in 2019, plants lost leaves and struggled, perhaps from the off-gassing from welding or other work.

Besides tending the plants, Richardson built a playhouse for tykes in the corner of the atrium and washes the windows between the atrium and pool.

His efforts don’t go unappreciated, said Cliff Miller, the pool’s assistant manager.

“The plant room adds to the warm, happy, sunshiney, get-away feeling of this place,” Miller said. “With the view out the window and the nice greens, it creates a little tropical atmosphere for your stay-cation.”

Miller said the plants draw a lot of comments and questions from pool users, including if they’re for sale. “People notice and appreciate the botanical garden atmosphere.”

Now mainly used for youth birthday parties, the atrium is a space open for public use by groups, he said.

Though he chuckled while telling a story of a snowbird who left two plants for the fall then took away three in the spring, Richardson emphasized that he’s not running a plant orphanage.

Ones left in the atrium often aren’t potted with a catchment, requiring either re-potting or more frequent watering. “I’m always reluctant (to take new plants) especially right now because there’s no room for any more. You can’t say there’s a service that’s being offered here.”