Autumn in the East Bay and A Preview of Spring

Dawn Redwood Glade in Winter

Obata Gate to the Japanese Pool

 University of California Botanical Garden ... A Preview

Photos Courtesy : University of California Botanical Garden

Autumn in the Asian Collection  

With its hilly topography, Strawberry Canyon is a dramatic setting for the U.C. Botanical Garden in Berkeley, 

located across the Bay Bridge to the east of San Francisco. Stretching over thirty-four acres, the grounds feature a geographical arrangement of gardens, displaying plants from around the world. Rhododendrons are well represented in the Asian gardens, along with maples and hydrangeas,  witch hazels and epimediums. Pictured above in a wintery scene, the Botanical Garden's lovely grove of Dawn redwood trees,  Metasequoia glyptostroboides, are another highlight in this collection. The unusual trees are deciduous conifers:  Having been believed to be extinct, they were discovered growing in western China  some sixty-five years ago. The trees at UCBG are among the first grown outside of China.

More to follow on the U.C. Botanical Gardens.

Across the Golden Gate - Sausalito at Sunset

Echeveria species: A drought-tolerant, pass-along plant.

An octogenarian when we met, Dr. Herman Schwartz loved to walk through his Bolinas gardens giving visitors bits of succulent plants as he shared tales of plant collecting in Africa, the Americas, and Madagascar. The passionate plantsman's arrays of cacti, agaves, aloes & crassulas put on a brilliant flowering spectacle in the winter! Amid all the rarities, a Euphorbia greenhouse contained towering to tiny, spiny and spineless species: Countless plants that one could see nowhere else in the U.S. When Dr. Schwartz died not long ago, the Marin-Bolinas Botanical Gardens - as his renowned collections came to be known, were shuttered.

Golden Gate Bridge

View from the grounds of Cavallo Point Lodge, a new resort hotel within historic Fort Baker, Marin County.

San Francisco Bay

November is a great time to visit the city, although it's the rainy season, days are often dry and sunny.

Many summer days in San Francisco are cold & fog shrouded... yet each city neighborhood

has its own microclimate!

Cross the Golden Gate into Marin County and the weather shifts dramatically once you're away from the coast,

with crystalline blue skies, hot days , low humidity, and cool nights for sleeping.

View of the city from Sausalito.

Sausalito ... a ferry ride from San Francisco - often the only other town visited

by international tourists.

Intrepid travelers rent bikes and travel across the Golden Gate Bridge to explore the surrounding hillsides.

Vertical Gardens! A Patrick Blanc Green Wall for San Francisco

Caixa Forum, Madrid

photos by sallylondon

Architects, Herzog & de Meuron (San Francisco's de Young Museum, 

among their accomplishments) designed the addition on the adjacent building adjacent to the green wall: 

The upper stories exhibiting a tactile, richly colored cor-ten steel facade, in brilliant juxtaposition alongside the verdant surface of Patrick Blanc's expansive plantings.

Blanc broke new ground when he developed a highly successful technique for living walls,  the vertical gardens that now adorn buildings worldwide in indoor and outdoor settings.

Years ago, while visiting Paris I planned an early-morning visit to the Pershing Hall hotel, to see an early Blanc project installed on an interior courtyard wall.

The green wall Blanc created for the Caixa Forum is composed of 15,000 plants;  250 different species. In Blanc's words, "The Vertical Garden allows man to re-create a living system very similar to natural environments. It's a way to add nature to places where man once removed it. Thanks to botanical knowledge, it's possible to display natural-looking plant landscapes even though they are man-made. ...a Vertical Garden" can be "a valuable shelter for biodiversity."

Locally, Blanc has been chosen to design a green wall for the new Assembly Wing of San Francisco's Drew School, Blanc's largest project in the U.S. to date.

I'll be attending Blanc's lecture in San Francisco.

A botanist by profession, with eye-popping green hair, 

Blanc is sure to draw an enthusiastic crowd to the SPUR center in downtown San Francisco!

Historic Gardens of Alcatraz - A Garden Conservancy Project

Westside gardens

Photos by Elizabeth Byers

Spring 2008

The Historic Gardens of Alcatraz

- a project of the Garden Conservancy - recently received two awards from the California Preservation Foundation.

Alcatraz staff family in an Officers' Row garden, circa 1869

Photo by Eadweard Muybridge, Bancroft Library

Roadside Gardens, 2009

The Garden Conservancy became involved in 2003 with spearheading the rehabilitation of the heritage gardens on The Rock: now a National Historic Landmark,

and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 22-acre island, part of the National Park Services Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is the GGNRA's most visited site, with some 1.3 million annual visitors

hopping a ferry ride from San Francisco to see Alcatraz first-hand.

Officers' Row, 2009

A brilliant team of volunteers have gardened and toiled

to restore the uniquely stunning landscape.

A tour is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure! The gardens shown to you within the context of history, horticulture, and cultural significance.

Filoli Fall Festival - Brilliant Color and Heirloom Fruit

Filoli 'Gentleman's Orchard,' photo by Jerry Barrack

6.8-acre landscape with over 670 trees: An eclectic connoisseur's collection of European and American varieties of fruits.

Filoli Autumn Festival - October 3, 2009

Kieffer Pear

Garden lovers from near and far are acquainted with the Filoli estate's celebrated landscape, the elaborate formal gardens embracing a wisteria-draped mansion designed by Willis Polk.

I would guess, however, that Filoli's orchard is less well-known. It is, in fact, the largest, and I must add, lovingly tended, heirloom orchard in private hands in the United States.

Families and friends in-the-know 'calendar' Filoli's Autumn Festival well in advance, in order not to miss this fundraiser with live music, orchard tours, floral design demonstrations,

and a host of activities to take part in for kids and adults.

Climbing Hydrangea

San Francisco Travel, Filoli Estate and Gardens

Photos Courtesy : Filoli

Built in 1917 for William Bourn III and his wife, Filoli was subsequently bequeathed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation by the Roth family.

The Georgian revival mansion, designed by Willis Polk, stands as a centerpiece in the estate's sixteen-acre formal garden, created by landscape designer Bruce Porter together with Isabella Worn.

Photos Nilda Gardon-Lindorfer: Filoli

The house's U-shaped floor plan features two axes and a long hallway that parallels the valley beyond. The garden's overall design with its north-south axis repeats the line of the mansion's transverse hall.

Especially lovely to behold in Spring, the garden plan unfolds in a series of walled rooms, with terraces and lawns, parterres and pools complementing the natural vegetation and vistas surrounding the estate.

The renowned Yew Allee demonstrates William Bourn's affection for Ireland's Muckross House, home to Bourn's daughter and son-in-law.  More than 200 Irish yews grown at Filoli were started from cuttings taken from Muckross. The yews, along with espaliered apple and pear trees lead to the High Place, an open-air theatre facing south, where ancient columns form an inspiring backdrop. 

Filoli opens its gates in early spring, when exuberant displays give rise to the mansion's clematis and wisteria-draped portico and terrace balustrades. The grounds teem with tulips and daffodils, azaleas, camellias, wildflowers and a trove of blooming shrubs. By late spring, glimmering dogwood and 'Sunburst' honey locust play a prominent role, while flowering cherries and laburnums are memorable focal points.

The Sunken Garden presents a balancing act between meticulously groomed hedges, soaring trees, profusely blooming container displays, and ornamentation - petite, cast-lead water maidens. Gazing at the vast hilly terrain visible in the distance seems to reenergize the spirit, as it completes the tableau. 

In the knot gardens, Celtic patterns are woven with emerald germander, violet-hued Japanese barberry, soft lavender, and silvery santolina, with its perky yellow flowers.

Italian Renaissance in style, the Walled Garden holds a central place among Filoli's gardens. This partitioned realm encompasses three garden rooms, each one characterized by its own indelibly romantic ambience.

The property surrounding the estate is a haven of undeveloped woods and fields that can be explored on hikes with Filoli's nature docents. Located in Woodside, 25 miles or so south of San Francisco, the microclimate is a nearly ideal environment for a garden of Filoli's caliber. William Bourn's vision for this land has continues to enthrall visitors to the estate. On another note, Isabella Worn remained involved with the plantings until the age of eighty-one. Together with owner and benefactor, Mrs. William P. Roth, the two lovingly nurtured Filoli's gardens for decades, carrying on Bourn's spirit.