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SAN FRANCISCO GARDEN TOUR REWARDS WITH BOUNTY, BEAUTY
You need to come back in the springtime, the locals told me, if you really want to see San Francisco in bloom.
My visit in early August provided sufficient sights and fragrances to fill four or five weekly columns. Here are some of the highlights.
An exercise walk Saturday morning along San Francisco's Embarcadero led serendipitously to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, a delightful mix of colors, sounds, smells and serious shoppers. Countless varieties of fruits and vegetables were on display, many of them prominently labeled as organically grown.
A fresh mushroom stall displayed nearly a dozen varieties, including oyster, portabella and shiitake.
Here in Minnesota, we are typically offered one variety each of peach, plum and nectarine. At the Ferry Plaza market, and at a fruit market I visited in Redwood City, I ogled and sampled more stone fruit varieties than I could imagine, and each free sample tasted sweeter and more tempting than the last.
The market also featured fresh oysters (three types) and clams, whole fresh salmon, California olive oils, California honey, dates, figs and almonds, fresh sourdough bread, Niman Ranch beef, and $8/dozen fresh-cut roses.
Leaving the farmers' market, I began the 383-step ascent to Coit Tower, a San Francisco landmark. The view of San Francisco Bay from the Tower is grand, but the view I enjoyed even more was of tiny hillside private gardens growing on each side of the wood steps. Carefully staked hybrid roses, wisteria vine, vivid bougainvillea, lilies of the Nile, and a spectacular 20-foot tree I later identified as Brugmansia, made the vertical climb seem almost effortless.
Brugmansia is grown indoors in many Minnesota homes. The trees along these steps - and at the Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Garden that I visited later - were in full bloom, showing off foot-long yellow flowers that hung down like church bells.
My most memorable stop was Filoli Gardens located 30 miles south of San Francisco. The Filoli gardens and mansion were built in 1915 on 654 acres by William Bourn, a wealthy San Franciscan. The name Filoli comes from the first two letters in the words fight, love and live in Bourn's credo: "To fight for a just cause, to love your fellow man, to live a good life."
Filoli's 36,000 square foot English country house has 43 rooms, 17 fireplaces and 11 chimneys. The house and 16 acres of formal gardens were designed as complimentary units with the north-south axis of the garden echoing the line of the transverse hall of the house. The gardens are a succession of separate areas, or garden "rooms," containing parterres, terraces, lawns and pools patterned after an English country estate.
Bourn loved Irish yew and planted more than 210 of these trees that today stand like erect blue-gray pillars. My guide explained that it was the Irish yew that allowed the British to defeat the French because the tree's slender branches yielded the long-bow, a weapon that proved superior to the shorter bows used by the French.
A springtime visit to Filoli would no doubt be spectacular. Early spring-blooming plants include camellias, daffodils, fruit trees, magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas, dogwoods, lilacs, redbuds and wisteria.
On my August visit, I got in on the blooms of begonia, clematis, delphinium, and many other annual and perennial flowers. Hydrangeas were flowering everywhere in the Bay area, showing off blossoms as big as basketballs in spectacular shades of purple, blue, red and pink.
Filoli has many unique gardens. A bell garden is planted in the shape of a bell using tightly clipped boxwood and various flowers. A sunken garden that boasts 50,000 tulips in spring was in full bloom in August with a dazzling array of blue and yellow flowers.
The knot garden features a complicated interweave of plants that, from above, is said to resemble a crochet knot. Historically, the plants from a knot garden were used as a potpourri on the floors of homes. The pleasing fragrance given off by the stepped-on leaves and berries masked the more offensive body odors of residents who bathed once a week (or less frequently).
A sundial in the center of the Walled Garden bears the inscription "Time began in a garden."
On another day, I visited the display garden of Sunset Magazine in Menlo Park. As a former magazine editor, I envied the beautiful and stimulating environment these editors have just a footstep or two outside their offices.
The gardens I toured just scratched the surface of horticultural tour possibilities in northern California. I picked up a map and guide to 38 public gardens in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and look forward to returning at another time, perhaps in the spring, to feast on these many natural wonders.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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