AUBURN – Wanda Braithwaite-Baril stood before the circle of freshly tilled earth and stared.

“Let me walk for a second,” she said, wading into the brown soil and following the tracks as they curved away.

“I got it,” she said, turning to David Brown, a Leeds farmer who brought his tractor to this Auburn church yard.

“Remember the peace sign?” she asked. “You know, the circle with the Y inside. The Y could also be his arms.”

The woman lifted her hands to the sky as if praying. “His arms were open for everybody,” she said.

Wanda is making a memorial garden.

It will be a place to sit and meditate. It will also be a place to remember the Rev. Isaac Jackson.

For more than 30 years, Jackson led the Auburn-based Christ Temple Church Of God In Christ.

He was a big man, wide, and more than 6 feet tall. He led his church like a father, or perhaps a gardener.

“He took people from a seed and nurtured and protected them,” said Braithwaite-Baril, who became a member of the Pentecostal church when she moved here from New York City in 1989.

Jackson would greet everyone at the door, she said. He had hugs for all.

“All you could feel is a big wave of love,” said Braithwaite-Baril. When bad times came, she and her family could always talk to him, comforted by his baritone voice.

Jackson’s heart failed early in 2003. He was 62. His brother, Albert, took his place preaching in the log-cabin-style church on Route 4.

Anyone who ever met Isaac Jackson will remember him, said Braithwait-Baril. But she wanted to do more.

A master gardener who works with the Rural Community Action Ministry in Leeds, she teaches people how to grow their own food. She thought of the open yard behind the church and the idea clicked.

She began cutting out pictures from gardening magazines, writing down ideas and visiting local stores. She imagines a bench, an arbor, a stone walkway and lots of white flowers, what landscapers describe as a “moonlight garden.”

And she is hoping for help.

Braithwaite-Baril hopes to build the garden with entirely donated materials. A local florist has promised some flowers and Brown tilled the soil for free.

“It’s a big project I’m trying to do,” she said. “But he deserves it. He was everybody’s grampa. He really exemplified the word of God.”