6 Californian gardens to covet
Though not as old as Europe’s grand gardens, these six convey a sense of the American West
A garden walk, guided or not, is practically a given for tourists to the grand European cities — through the terraced Boboli in Florence, the Gaudi-designed Park Guell in Barcelona, around the Palace Versailles near Paris and the grounds of Charles University in Prague.
The U.S., too, has its canon of must-see gardens — the big deal New York Botanical Garden, Cheekwood in Nashville, the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Ore.
But there are smaller, less heralded gardens in the West that hold a certain allure. These are quick stops on the way to somewhere else that inspire with their forms, their missions and their unusual plantings — especially to those of us who tend to gardens at home.
Do they hold up to the standards set by centuries-old European gardens and the big-budget city gardens? Probably not. But these six little northern California gardens are aspirational, historic, and in many ways, extraordinary.
Sunset Garden
80 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Most Western U.S. gardeners have at least flipped through a copy of Sunset magazine, looking for chic landscape design ideas and solid advice about what plants are likely to thrive — not merely survive the winter. Unlike many other magazines that are produced in soulless city office towers, Sunset’s home is a sprawling campus of buildings designed by famed California architect Cliff May, where lines are blurred between indoor office spaces and the huge display garden out back.
The garden underwent a major renovation in 2000 that maintained areas representing the climate zones of the American West, but new shrubs, vines, grasses and ground covers create a elegant backdrop of texture for blooming shrubs and perennials.
The real work is done in the magazine’s Editorial Garden, where plants and growing techniques are tested. This relatively tiny garden includes herbs,