Barbara Worl

February 27, 1927 to September 12, 2017

Barbara Worl, eminent California gardener and rosarian, died peacefully after a brief illness on September 12, 2017, at her home in Menlo Park, California. She was 90 years of age.

Born in Cambridge City, Indiana, to Russell and Hazel Worl and educated at Westtown, a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, she came to California in 1945 to study at Stanford University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1950 with a degree in English history and a minor in English literature.

That same year she began a 55-year career at Bell’s Books in Palo Alto, where she built up a superb horticultural section. Her deep knowledge of literature, gardening, and children’s books became indispensable to hundreds of customers and her grateful colleagues.

A gifted photographer, she founded Sweetbrier Press to publish a line of handmade cards and calendars featuring her own photos. Her facsimile edition of Henry Curtis’s “Beauties of the Rose” won high praise from Graham Stuart Thomas, then head of Great Britain’s National Trust.

Her own garden was so magical that British nurseryman Peter Beales featured it in his 1996 book “Visions of Roses”. She gave enchanting slide talks on gardens, was a regular speaker at The Huntington, and a pioneer in importing historic French roses. In the 1970s she helped found the Heritage Roses Group Bay Area. In 2007 she was honored by the Heritage Rose Foundation and also received the Founders Award from the Western Horticultural Society.

In the late 1960s Barbara met her lifelong partner and true friend, Israel Washington Harris, a WWII Purple Heart veteran and civil rights activist who died in 2006. She is survived by his children and by her Indiana family. She was a beloved godmother and a dear friend to countless others. In a letter to her Westtown classmates, Barbara wrote, “I look back on my life with joy and wish the same to all of you.”

A memorial will be held on March 4, 2018, at 2:00 p.m. at Christ Church, 815 Portola Road in Portola Valley. Please come and share stories of Barbara.