A group of neighbors on Denver's southeast side wants to know why the city took apart their beloved rock garden. The painted rock garden started as a way to bring the community together during the pandemic and ended this week with the rocks being hauled off in a city vehicle. "They were just bright and cheery," Holly Knor said as she walked her dogs on the Hampden Heights trail Tuesday. "I'd just be walking and thinking about different things in life and whenever I would see one of the rocks, it always made me smile." The garden was started by Kim McMahon. "It was my way of kind of bringing the community together for a project that would create love, empathy, peace, joy, and hope," she said. McMahon has been painting stones with kind messages for nearly five years. The outside of her house is decorated with them too. "I'll just write out something, and just a special message, like, 'You got this,' or 'You rock' or 'You matter.'" She'd often leave them under a tree by the trail, though she put some of the rocks in other spots around the Hampden Heights neighborhood too. "Some people will leave fresh rocks. Some people will take a rock and move it to a different place for somebody else to find. Some people will just take one if they're having a hard day or if they are experiencing a tragedy, then they can take whatever rock that speaks to them," she said. But the neighborhood's pile of half a decade is now gone. Another neighbor captured a video Tuesday afternoon of Denver Parks & Recreation workers shoveling the rocks off of the ground and into a vehicle before they drove away.