Pink bougainvillea drapes a wall at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Pink bougainvillea drapes a wall at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Built with a view of Malibu Pier and the ocean, Rhoda and Merritt Huntley Adamson’s beach cottage was decorated with tiles from Malibu Potteries.
23200 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA 90265
Visit year-round
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(310) 456-8432 |
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Grounds open daily 8am–sunset; house and museum open Fri–Sat 11am–3pm |
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Admission free for grounds; fee for house tour; no parking on grounds—paid parking in adjacent lot |
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Public transportation |
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No dogs |
Breathtaking 1920s-era oceanside house and botanic garden in Malibu
Hidden behind nondescript stone walls along the Pacific Coast Highway just north of Malibu Pier is a magnificent oceanside estate. If you’re interested in history, botany, or architecture, or all three, find a parking space in the adjacent city lot and make your way past the windmill palms that flank the entrance gate to the Adamson House. The grounds, with their eye-stretching views of Malibu Lagoon and Surfrider Beach, are a state park and open daily to the public (there’s even a picnic table if you want to bring lunch). The house, a National Historic Site and California Historic Landmark, is open only on Fridays and Saturdays.
The thirteen acres that the Adamson house and gardens occupy today are only a tiny fraction of the 13,000 acres of Malibu beachfront property once owned by Frederick H. and Rhoda May Rindge. They bought the land in 1892, soon after Frederick inherited $2 million and they moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to California. Rindge then wrote a book called Happy Days in Southern California. If you owned all Malibu, you might be happy too. But there were fierce legal battles. Henry Huntington (of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens) tried to extend his Southern Pacific Railroad right through the Rindges’ property. Fred successfully thwarted Huntington’s plans by building his own railroad, but then the state of California wanted to build a road along the then-roadless coast. That, too, was challenged and rechallenged until finally the state and county took the land by eminent domain and constructed the Roosevelt Highway, now called the Pacific Coast Highway or Highway 1, which opened in 1928.
By that time, Fred was long dead and the enterprising Rhoda May had spent over twenty years building their Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit into the most valuable real estate in the United States. She also started the acclaimed Malibu Potteries. The locally produced ceramic tiles with their Mediterranean-inspired designs were used in hundreds of homes throughout the West from 1926 until 1932.
When daughter Rhoda married Merritt Huntley Adamson, mother Rhoda May gifted them the beachside property known as Vaquero or Cowboy Hill. A new “beach cottage” surrounded by lush gardens and fountains went with it. Since the land was mostly sand dunes, it was necessary to truck in thousands of tons of topsoil. The Adamsons took possession of their new Hispano-Moorish beach house in 1929, and the younger Rhoda lived in it until 1962. The property was slated for redevelopment until concerned citizens rallied to save it. Eventually the state bought the property for use as a state park, but the house fell into disrepair and the neglected gardens became overgrown. Today, the restored house and gardens form a remarkable oceanside ensemble that typifies and illuminates a privileged Southern California lifestyle of the 1920s and 1930s.
DeWitt Norris, the landscape architect, worked with Morgan Evans (who would later do the landscaping at Disneyland) to create the multi-level gardens with their lush green lawns, vibrant flower beds, and collection of Mediterranean trees and shrubs. The gardens have been reduced over the years and don’t look as bounteous as they did when six gardeners were on staff, but there is a lot here for garden lovers to enjoy, not least of which is the glinting blue backdrop of the Pacific.
The collection of mature palms and exotic flowering trees and shrubs is the most noteworthy feature of the gardens. On the lower tier, look for the Australian cow-itch trees (Lagunaria patersonia)—slender, broadleaf evergreens with pink hibiscuslike flowers and nutlike seed capsules filled with irritating hairs. (Hence the itch, but why the cow?) On the lawn between the lath house (once used as a plant shed) and the gift shop, sniff out the gnarled but heavily perfumed tree gardenia (Gardenia thunbergia) from southeastern Africa. Several sorts of guava, including pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana) and lemon guava (Psidium littorale), planted in front of the tiny gift shop, are notable for their intensely colored flowers. “Flamboyant” is the only word to describe the long-blooming (up to eight months) marmalade bush (Streptosolen jamesonii) with its cascading clusters of gold, peach, and orange flowers; look for it near the tilework fountain behind the house. Another flame-flowered beauty is the African coral tree or kaffirboom (Erythrina caffra), which is the official tree of Los Angeles; it grows on a slope above a patio on the landward side of the house. If the garden has one signature tree, it’s the distinctive bunya-bunya (Araucaria bidwillii), an Australian native that looks like a pine (but isn’t) and drops cones the size of bowling balls; it’s one of the oldest tree species still in existence, dating back to the Cretaceous era. Scattered around the grounds you’ll also find a lemon tree (Citrus limonia) from Burma, a pomegranate (Punica granatum) from Iran, and olive trees (Olea europaea) from Italy. Though it’s not an exotic, the California sycamore (Platanus racemosa) that shades the Wedding Lawn near the entrance is spectacular in its girth and canopy.
Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis), their fronds glistening in the sun and waving in the Pacific breezes, lend a tropical air to the property. Other palms in the collection include Senegal date palm (P. reclinata); an unusual multi-trunked Mediterranean fan palm (Chamaerops humilis); and California’s only native palm, Washingtonia robusta.
If you’re not on a docent-led house tour, you’ll have to content yourself with admiring the white stucco Adamson beach cottage from the outside. The front courtyard of flagstones set within bright green St. Augustine grass looks almost surreally at odds with the Spanish and Moorish-style architecture. The interior is fascinating because almost every room is decorated with ceramic tiles from Malibu Potteries; it is, in fact, the most complete assemblage of these tiles in the world. You can see them outside as well, on the wall fountains behind the house and in the rear patio, and on the Moorish-style, star-shaped fountain on the lower lawn. The former garage, which once berthed the Adamsons’ three Pierce-Arrow automobiles, has been converted to the small Malibu Lagoon Museum of local history (open only when the house is open). Courtyards, patios, balconies, and service areas around the house are embellished with container plants, shaded by exotic trees, and festooned with colorful vines. There’s also a swimming pool with a tile-embellished pavilion, a boat house and, of course, the whelping shed where the Adamsons’ collies gave birth to more Adamson collies. The family is gone but their house and gardens still provide a unique record of the Malibu they once owned.
The Adamson House is surrounded by a portion of the original gardens and can be visited on docent-led tours.
Bougainvillea adorns towering sheave-shaped bowers in Robert Irwin’s garden at the Getty Center.
1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Visit year-round
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(310) 440-7300 |
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Open Tues–Wed 11am–7pm, Thurs–Fri 11am–9pm, Sat–Sun 10am–6pm; closed Mondays and major holidays |
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Gardens and museum admission free via timed-entry ticket available on website; you must reserve in advance via website and pay for on-site parking (same-day use with Getty Villa) if you arrive by car |
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Public transportation |
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No dogs |
World-renowned museum with a garden that is a living work of art
Richard Meier, the architect of the Getty Center, hated Robert Irwin’s garden. And Robert Irwin, the artist who created the Getty Center Central Garden, despised Richard Meier’s architecture. I suppose one could charitably look upon this battle of two Godzilla-sized egos as a kind of yin and yang. Personally, I am on Irwin’s side. The garden at the Getty Center is full of life, color, imagination, and movement. As for the museum buildings … well, when you visit the Getty Center, you can decide for yourself.
And visit you should, because the Getty Center, however you look at it, provides a unique cultural experience. The garden alone makes a trip there worthwhile, but you also get to enjoy the art collection (the star attraction likely being Van Gogh’s Irises). The oil magnate J. Paul Getty bought 750 acres of a mountaintop for his museum complex and then proceeded to shave it down into five levels crowned by Meier’s white, fortresslike buildings. There’s definitely a sense of destination and arrival as you make your way by tram from the parking levels up to the entrance; it’s like a Los Angeles version of the Acropolis.
You’ll see Meier’s version of a garden, courtesy of landscape architect Laurie Olin, in the Arrival Plaza: aerial hedges with razor-clipped sides, a lavender trellis with a white wisteria, pollarded sycamores. Stiff, controlled, subservient to the architecture, this is the sort of plantscape Meier would like to have seen everywhere at the Getty Center. Many of us are thankful he didn’t get his way.
Let’s move on to Robert Irwin’s Central Garden. An installation artist associated with the Light and Space art movement of the 1960s, Irwin was sixty-four years old when he received the commission to design the Getty Center garden in 1992. It took five years to complete and was apparently a somewhat humbling experience, since Irwin didn’t really know that much about garden plants and had to work closely with the landscape architecture firm Spurlock Poirier, as well as horticulturists, nurserymen, and the disapproving Meier. The Getty Center considers Irwin’s work a copyrighted piece of art and officially describes it as “Mixed media (construction and plant materials), 134,000 sq. ft.” A staff of forty gardeners keeps this art garden—and Laurie Olin’s Cactus Garden, the other big garden at the Getty Center—in museum-quality shape. Because it is a work of art that uses water as an essential component, it is exempt from the drought-related water restrictions that have stopped the gush, flow, and trickle of most other fountains in California.
Irwin famously described his work for the Getty as “a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art.” Think of it as an immersive experience that unfolds around you and engages all your senses. Irwin wanted the garden to be the natural antithesis of the forbidding structures behind it: there’s no white, no square or geometric shapes; where steel is used it’s meant to rust, not gleam. It’s not as if Irwin reinvented the wheel here; the garden’s basic elements—plants, stone, water—have been the building blocks of garden design for millennia. Like all gardens, this one is about color, shape, texture, and the interplay of plants with nature. There’s no need to interpret anything. Just enjoy it, and know that it is one of the most meticulously groomed and cared for gardens in the world.
The first part of the garden is deceptively simple. A narrow, zigzagging pathway forces you to slow down, walk single file, pay attention. A stream flows down a culvertlike channel, filling the air with a quiet rush of sound. Five bridges cross the stream and at each bridge the course and sound of the water changes. You walk from full sunlight into the dappled shade of sycamores. Three times a year the gardeners are tasked with cutting off every other leaf to create the perfect dapple. Deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) is planted like a flowing undercurrent beneath the sycamores. There are other trees in the garden, too—dogwoods, crape myrtles, and paperbark maples—with different blossoms, bark textures, leaf shapes, and colors.
Next comes a zone of small plants with muted colors. As you continue down the path, the size of the plants increases and the colors intensify. And when I say color, I mean color. Unlike the architect Meier, the artist Irwin was drawn to a mix of hot pinks, reds, purples, and oranges; nasturtium is his favorite color. You’ll see lots of mirror plants (Coprosma repens ‘Tequila Sunrise’), a tender evergreen with gorgeously colored leaves. When Irwin wanted to add a rose to his garden palette, he chose Rosa ‘Trumpeter’, the reddest of the red floribundas. And more color awaits you as the pathway descends to a plaza graced with three bougainvillea arbors. In recent summers, they have appeared a bit scrawny because of the drought, but the bright pink flowers trained up inside steel trellises that look like giant wheatsheaves are still an amazing sight.
Robert Irwin’s art garden at the Getty Center culminates in the Sunken Garden.
Water flows through the bougainvillea plaza and cascades over a massive stone wall into an enormous pool. Planters in the center of the pool hold a breathtaking display of flowering plants—just one type per season—in an intricate design reminiscent of a Moorish pattern or Elizabethan knot garden. In the early spring you’ll see pink-flowering dogwoods; red-flowered azaleas come later. A walkway leads around the pool, but you’re always above it, looking down at the brilliantly colorful design against the backdrop of the stone wall with the cascading water. The cost of changing out these thousands of flowering plants every season and trucking them to nurseries where they spend the rest of the year is astronomical, to say the least. But that’s the price you pay for having a world-class art garden viewed by thousands of visitors a day.
But wait, there’s more! Actually, there’s a lot more. Laurie Olin’s landscaping for the rest of the museum campus complements the architecture but never challenges it, the way Irwin’s garden does. Olin’s most visible work is the Cactus Garden at the South Promontory. As you climb the stairs to reach it, you’ll pass plantings of agave and bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae, the official flower of Los Angeles). The spiny mounds and spiky columns of the Cactus Garden fill the long, reverse-P-shaped extension of the South Promontory. You can’t get into the garden, but enjoy the view—all Los Angeles is spread out before you in the distance.
Laurie Olin’s Cactus Garden at the Getty Center overlooks Los Angeles.
The dramatic Outer Peristyle garden at the Getty Villa in Malibu is an authentic re-creation of a Roman garden buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA 90265
Visit year-round
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(310) 440-7300 |
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Open Wed–Mon 10am–5pm, Sat 10am–9pm; closed Tuesdays and major holidays |
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Admission free but timed-entry ticket required via website; parking fee (same-day use with Getty Center); reserve free tickets in advance |
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No dogs |
Ancient Roman-style gardens re-created in a villa-museum in Malibu
If you’ve ever wondered what an ancient Roman garden looked like, the Getty Villa in Malibu offers a unique opportunity to see one. The villa opened in 1974, but its horticultural and architectural antecedents date back almost 2,000 years, specifically to 79 A.D. That’s the year Mt. Vesuvius blew its top and buried the southern Italian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under a layer of volcanic ash. The ash hardened and preserved both cities, providing archaeologists with a comprehensive and unusually intimate view of Roman life in the first century.
J. Paul Getty visited these world-famous tourist sites near Naples in 1912 and was so impressed that he began to collect Roman antiquities. Several decades later, when he decided to build a museum to house this collection, he chose to reproduce the Villa dei Papiri (Villa of the Papyri) from Herculaneum as the setting for his treasures. Although it’s been adapted to serve as a modern museum, the villa displays all the classic architectural features of a luxurious first-century Roman country house.
Re-creating a Roman garden of antiquity was a trickier proposition. Garden scenes painted on the walls of ancient Roman villas provided clues as to what plants the Romans used and how their gardens were laid out. Later, archeologists were able to identify specific plants based on the size of their excavated root cavities. Garden curators traveled to Italy to visit ancient garden sites and study the latest research. The result is that the gardens at the Getty Villa provide the finest example of an ancient Roman garden anywhere in the United States (and perhaps the world). Malibu’s Mediterranean climate offers growing conditions similar to those of southern Italy, so the same plants that once graced the Villa dei Papiri can be seen at the Getty Villa.
The herbs and pollarded fruit trees in the long, walled, rectangular Herb Garden, the first garden you come to, served a variety of culinary, medicinal, and ritual needs. The mosaic of hardy perennials and colorful annuals includes mint, lemon balm, lovage, dittany, oregano, thyme, spearmint, apple mint, horsemint, lavender, bay leaf, rue, basil, chives, and walking onions. What the heck, you may ask, is a walking onion? Originally from Egypt, these miniature onions grow on the top of the stalk; when they mature, they pull the stalk down and, if soil conditions are right, set new plants—in other words, they “walk” across the garden. The tall, thistlelike plants in the Herb Garden are cardoons, related to globe artichokes; the Romans ate their braised stems. Costmary, an aromatic plant in the daisy family, was used as a bookmark in papyrus scrolls because it repels silverfish. Many of the plants in Roman gardens attracted bees and were important in the production of honey.
The Romans cultivated many apple and stone fruit trees that had been brought to Greece and the Mediterranean from the Far East by Alexander the Great as early as the fourth century B.C.: pomegranate, plum, olive, lemon, apple, peach, fig, pear, and apricot were all known to Roman gardeners. And we mustn’t forget the grapes that put the veritas in Roman vino. The grape vines at the villa are trained on trellises made from alder grown along the Amalfi coast.
As you enter and explore the villa, you’ll come upon three more gardens. They are defined by the site’s symmetrical architecture and are themselves symmetrical, built within open peristyles (covered walkways). The Outer Peristyle, adjacent to the Herb Garden and entered from the villa’s south doors, is the largest and most dramatic of the gardens. Though it’s empty now (because of the drought), a 17-foot-deep and 220-foot-long pool forms the garden’s centerpiece. The pool, blue as a slice of the Mediterranean, is surrounded by gravel pathways, circular stone benches, geometrical boxwood hedges, and lush plantings of flowers (violets, marigolds, roses), herbs (rosemary), woody shrubs (bay laurel, myrtle, oleanders), English ivy, and European fan palms. The Romans loved roses for their color, scent, and oils, and here you’ll see the damasks and brilliant magenta campion roses grown in antiquity. Replicas of bronze sculptures found at the Villa dei Papiri are placed in their original locations. A peristyle with marble columns surrounds this formal garden and leads visitors past trompe l’oeil wall paintings to an outdoor gallery with views of the Pacific Ocean.
Bronze civet heads adorn the central fountain in the Getty Villa’s East Garden; theatrical masks and mosaic tiles decorate an adjacent wall fountain.
The more intimate Inner Peristyle is surrounded on all four sides by the villa’s living quarters (now galleries in the museum). The narrow reflecting pool (recently reflecting nothing more than California’s drought) is graced by bronze statues of women who look as though they might be dancing or casting magic spells, but are actually drawing and carrying water from a stream; their ivory inlayed eyes give them a spooky, supernatural look. The statues and square marble basins are replicas of finds from the Villa dei Papiri. Strips of boxwood and domes of rosemary enhance the symmetrical architecture and add a refreshing touch of green. If and when the pools in the two peristyle gardens are once again filled, the sparkling water will animate and add immeasurably to the beauty of the spaces.
Bronze statues re-created from Roman originals line the reflecting pool of the Inner Peristyle garden at the Getty Villa.
Water is also an integral component of the East Garden, a tranquil walled sanctuary found beyond the east stair of the museum. It still flows from the mouths of the sculpted bronze civets encircling the large basin fountain in the center of the garden, but the other fountain, built into the east wall and decorated with theatrical masks and mosaic tiles with sea shells, has been turned off. Shaded by sycamore and laurel trees, this peaceful haven was used exclusively by the family, and especially by the women of the household, who could come here to escape the busy comings and goings and business dealings that took place in the villa. It was the only place where they could enjoy privacy and quiet contemplation.
The gardens are integral to the whole experience of the Getty Villa, just as they were to the Villa dei Papiri almost 2,000 years ago. In that sense, they are timeless reminders of the aesthetic and utilitarian beauty that plants bring into our lives, wherever and whenever we live.
A pensive-looking bronze boy at the Getty Villa was re-created from an original Roman work from the first century A.D.
Strong architectural elements evoke Renaissance Italy at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills.
905 Loma Vista Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Visit year-round; April–September for roses
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(310) 285-6830 |
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Grounds open daily 10am–5pm (6pm summer); closed Thanksgiving, Dec 25; house open only for special events |
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Grounds admission free |
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Dogs on leash |
Though it doesn’t have the botanical splendor or glamorous cachet of the nearby Virginia Robinson Gardens, this former Beverly Hills estate is worth a quick visit just to marvel at the size of the house—in all California, only Hearst Castle in San Simeon is larger—and to enjoy the remnants of its once-great gardens. Keep in mind, however, that the story behind Greystone is in some ways more compelling than what you’ll find there today.
If you live in Southern California, you’re probably aware of the name Doheny. Doheny Drive and Doheny Road in Beverly Hills, and Doheny State Beach in Orange County are all named for Edward L. Doheny (1856–1935), a Wisconsin-born wheeler-dealer who made history—and millions of dollars—when he struck oil in Los Angeles in 1892. Geysers of liquid gold in L.A. and later Mexico catapulted this scrappy Irish Catholic, who just a few years earlier didn’t have money to pay his rent, into one of the world’s richest men. In 1926 he bought 12.5 acres of undeveloped ranchland atop a lofty Beverly Hills ridge and gave it to his only son, Ned, as a belated wedding gift. A 46,000-square-foot mansion with landscaped grounds and gardens went with it. It took a year and a half to complete and cost Doheny over $3 million. To be fair, Ned did have to kick in ten bucks to “purchase” the place from his dad.
He may have been devout, but old man Doheny was hardly ethical when it came to his business dealings. He paid a $100,000 bribe to Albert Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Warren G. Harding, so that Fall would award him oil-drilling rights on a huge swath of federally owned land in Wyoming known as Teapot Dome. Ned and his childhood friend Theodore “Hugh” Plunkett were tapped to deliver the payola in a black valise. The bribe was discovered, Fall was sent to jail, and the Dohenys, father and son, were indicted, along with Hugh Plunkett. The Teapot Dome scandal, as it came to be known, remained the biggest U.S. government scandal until Watergate.
On the night of February 16, 1929, before Ned and Hugh Plunkett were scheduled to testify, and just months after Ned, his wife, and five children finally moved into Greystone Mansion, Ned was shot to death in his new home by Plunkett, who then turned the gun on himself. That was the official story, at any rate. It’s full of holes, so to speak, but if I spend any more time on this lurid murder-suicide, we’ll never get to the gardens—or what’s left of them.
As you walk down from the parking lot, you’ll come to a terrace that offers the first glimpse of the grounds designed by the German-American landscape architect Paul Thiene (1880–1971). Thiene had been employed by the famous landscape firm Olmsted Brothers in Brookline, Massachusetts, until 1910, and probably came to Doheny’s attention when Thiene worked on the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park. For Greystone, Thiene laid out a series of formal terraces that took advantage of the magnificent views of Los Angeles (with Doheny’s oil rigs visible in the distance) and adorned them with a hodgepodge of European garden styles. It’s hard to classify the overall scheme except to say that it’s neo, with neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, and neoclassical elements drawn from garden styles in Italy, France, and England. Fountains and pools added a further touch of romance, as did flowing brooks and a now-vanished 80-foot waterfall.
The first terrace you come to instantly evokes Renaissance Italy. Here you can see how Thiene’s strong architectural elements defined the formal garden spaces. A plaza with a central fountain has wide steps that lead up to a higher view terrace with a stone balustrade lined with rapier-thin Italian cypresses. From here you descend to a lower level where a narrow, grassy allée runs between more cypresses and the upper terrace’s massive stone wall. It looks like the thick defensive wall of a medieval castle in England or France.
From here, look down on the back of the enormous mansion designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann, a Southern California architect. The exterior, clad in Indiana limestone and roofed with Welsh slate, is somewhat dour. The opulence is all within. The fifty-five rooms feature oak and marble floors, hand-carved stone fireplaces, oak balustrades, and ceiling beams. There was a screening room, even a bowling alley. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see any of it unless you’re attending a special event.
Make your way behind the house and through the giant courtyard to the front entrance. Stairs lead down to a double row of boxwood parterres planted with white roses beside the house. The walkway ends at a long, lovely reflecting pool full of waterlilies and bordered by colorful begonias, a neoclassical exedra at the far end. The view from here extends all the way to Santa Monica Bay.
The last garden area to visit is the Formal Garden, located beside the first terrace you encountered. Here, a verdant green lawn is enclosed within a stone wall to the east and a carved balustrade to the west. A fountain murmurs on a geometric pavement at the north end. The garden has a quiet, almost cloistered feel.
The story of Greystone didn’t end with Ned’s murder and Hugh Plunkett’s suicide. Lucy, Ned’s widow, remarried and lived in the mansion until 1955. It was sold and resold and finally purchased by the City of Beverly Hills in 1965 so they could build a 19-million-gallon reservoir at the top of the property. In 1971, Doheny’s original parcel and an additional three acres was turned into a public park. Once a verdant showplace, some of the property now looks sadly neglected. But the massive house and the gardens that remain are evocative reminders of the larger-than-life personalities and rags-to-riches stories on which Los Angeles was built. Film buffs take note: the character Daniel Day-Lewis plays in There Will Be Blood is loosely based on Edward Doheny.
Boxwood parterres enclose rose beds at Greystone Mansion, once the largest residence in Los Angeles.
Feathery Australian tree ferns and a collection of primitive cycads give parts of the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA a tropical look.
UCLA campus, 777 Tiverton Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Visit year-round; April and May for flowering cacti and maximum blooms
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(310) 825-1260 |
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Open Mon–Fri 8am–5pm, Sat–Sun and winter 8am–4pm; closed university holidays |
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Admission free |
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Some steep steps not suitable for wheelchairs; finding a close parking spot is difficult, and parking rules are strictly enforced |
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Public transportation |
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No dogs |
Whenever I visit this seven-acre botanical garden on the UCLA campus in central L.A., I feel like I’m entering a wonderful old library, one that’s crowded with rare plants instead of books. Established in 1929, the garden is loaded with decades’ worth of tropical and subtropical species that reflect the ongoing research and horticultural interests of UCLA faculty and students. It’s dense and even junglelike in places, and you never know what you’ll find around the next corner.
The garden was built on an arroyo—a dry, steep-sided canyon with a creek running through it—back when much of L.A. was still undeveloped. The land was originally covered with coastal sage scrub, the tough, drought-resistant plants native to this part of Southern California. Those plants were removed to make way for new plants from around the world. The garden’s first manager, the aptly named George C. Groenewegen (which means “greenways”), put out a “plants wanted” call to other botanical gardens and collections throughout California. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture donated specimens. Before twenty years had passed, the garden had about 1,500 species and varieties. That number soon expanded to over 3,500.
As it grew, the garden planted more and more trees, including many species of figs (Ficus) and eucalyptus that later became mainstays of California landscaping. (Little did they know that horticultural opinion would eventually turn against Australian eucalyptus, which are today considered something of invasive pests.) By the 1950s, the garden also had special sections devoted to succulents, aquatics, camellias, and gymnosperms (conifers, ginkgos, cycads). One of the largest Torrey pines in the United States makes its home here, as does a 160-foot-tall Eucalyptus grandis, giant bamboo, and a cinnamon tree from southeast Asia. The garden also has four dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), a deciduous redwood thought to be extinct until it was discovered in a remote valley in China in 1941. The garden was among the first in the United States to receive seeds.
The garden’s many palm trees give it a dense, exotic overlay. The palm collection on Pine and Palm Hill and scattered throughout the grounds features over fifty species, including windmill palms (the wood used for construction in China), Corypha species from southeast Asia, Canary Island date palms, and Asian fishtail palms that flower once and then die. The Chilean wine palms, now threatened in their native habitat, bleed sap that is used to make palm honey and palm wine.
As you wander along the shady paths on the west side of the arroyo, you’ll encounter a fern collection with terrestrial, arboreal, and aquatic species, and a bromeliad garden with a diverse collection of plants from Hawaii. Obtaining plants with exotic blooms, like Hawaiian hibiscus, was part of the collecting strategy in the garden’s earlier years.
Not everything here is rare or exotic. The habitat garden, used as a living classroom for students to learn the importance of habitat creation and conservation, displays over a hundred species of common plants like echinaceas, buddleias, milkweeds, salvias, and chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata) that attract birds and benefit butterflies, moths, and insects.
The scene changes on the east side of the garden, where the dry, sunny slopes are given over to native California plants (like that Torrey pine) and the desert garden with desert willows, ocotillos, and huge euphorbias. A grass tree with pom-poms of flowering green stalks, and a lovely, purple-flowering lilac vine (Hardenbergia violacea) are Australian imports. The Ephedra tweediana from South America is an interesting shrub with a grasslike mass of leaves on thin, wiry, flexible branches. I particularly like the fact that when plants blossom in this garden, and lots of them do, sometimes spectacularly, the dead flowers aren’t trimmed off. It lets you see the entire life cycle of the plant.
The garden is named for Dr. Mildred Mathias (1906–1995), who served as director from 1956 to 1974. This Missouri-born botanist was a pioneer in her field and a tireless researcher and educator who became a leading botanist and conservationist in America. In the early 1960s, she was one of the first to decry the destruction of the tropical rain forests and in 1964, when the field of ethnopharmacology was in its infancy, she went on expeditions to Amazonian Peru and Ecuador, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar to collect and screen plants of tropical forests for new medicines, learning about the properties of certain plants from native herbalists and medicine men. Her efforts as a conservationist won her many prestigious awards, and after retiring, she continued to lead research groups to the tropics. Mathias made her last trip to Costa Rica in 1994, when she was eighty-eight years old, and was planning another one when she died the following year. It’s dedicated botanists and plant lovers like Mildred Mathias who today use the garden as a living plant laboratory.
Fruiting pomegranate trees are among the many botanical delights to be found at the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden.
Above the Lily Pond is the ornate, Beaux-Arts–style Pool Pavilion at the Virginia Robinson Gardens.
1008 Elden Way, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Visit year-round; January and February for camellias and azaleas; April–July for roses; November–June for clearest ocean views
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(310) 550-2087 |
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Open for docent-led tours only, Tues–Sat at 10am and 1pm, by advance reservation |
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Admission fee |
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Stairways in some parts of the garden not suitable for wheelchairs |
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No dogs |
The first garden estate in Beverly Hills features lavish gardens and a historic mansion
Touring this century-old Beverly Hills estate is a highlight among Southern California house and garden experiences, but you need to make a reservation at least two weeks in advance. Once inside the gates, you’ll be treated to a fascinating glimpse of a golden age that lives on in this most elegant of garden settings.
To understand this estate and what it represents in California’s cultural and horticultural history, you have to know a bit about Harry and Virginia Robinson, the power couple who created it. Virginia Dryden was a Missouri-born belle who moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1880, long before Hollywood became a mecca for moviemaking. In 1903 she married her neighbor, Harry Robinson, heir to the Robinson department store chain. Fast forward a few years: Harry inherits the Robinson chain, it expands into the Robinsons-May company and eventually, after Harry’s death, with Virginia as chairman, morphs into Macy’s. Retail has its rewards.
After a three-year honeymoon in Europe, India, and Kashmir, Harry and Virginia returned to Los Angeles and bought a 15-acre parcel of land in the treeless lima-bean fields that would eventually become Beverly Hills. The sloping land offered a vista of the Pacific Ocean, seven miles away, and Catalina Island. Virginia’s architect father was hired to design the 6,000-square-foot neoclassical Italianate villa they called home for the rest of their lives. In 1911, when they moved in, you could say Beverly Hills was born.
So were the gardens. Both Virginia and Harry were avid gardeners—Virginia once said she was “almost a professional gardener”—and were inspired by the plants and gardens they saw on their world travels. When you visit this historic estate today, it’s difficult to believe that the lush array of mature tropical and semi-tropical plants and trees hasn’t always been here. But the gardens were started entirely from scratch, often from seeds or cuttings.
Throughout their tenure, the Robinsons obtained horticultural advice from landscape architects, important nurserymen, and influential friends. One garden consultant worked for the director Cecil B. DeMille, another for their neighbors, Walt and Lillian Disney. There’s a sense of drama and theatricality in the gardens, to be sure, but it’s generous and assured rather than vulgar and over-the-top. These gardens were, after all, not created just for quiet repose; for decades they were the scene of glamorous Hollywood parties on a lavish scale.
The Front Garden was the first to be planted. It’s still graced by the Southern magnolia and tulip magnolia trees that were planted in the 1920s. White and purple wisteria drapes the porch where Virginia liked to be photographed when the flowers were in bloom. The tall organ pipe cactus (Cereus peruvianus) on one side of the porch was given to Virginia as a gift in a five-gallon pot; it blooms only at night, producing large, fragrant white flowers that have a very short shelf life. The bay laurel and Himalayan laurel hedges are fragrant, too. The gold medallion tree (Cassia leptophylla), at its showiest in the spring, was planted by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in 1976, to commemorate Virginia’s plan to gift her house and gardens to the County of Los Angeles; she died the following year.
The tour includes a visit to the main rooms in the villa, still furnished as they were when the Robinsons began to host their famous dinner parties and galas. To say that Virginia ran a tight ship is an understatement. In her household, the protocol used was the same as at the White House. Every Wednesday there was a black-tie dinner for twenty-one, with food prepared by her Cordon Bleu–trained chef. The guest list for larger parties and benefits could reach 400. Every summer, to kick off the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, the orchestra would come to the Robinsons’ and repeat their opening-night concert on the Great Lawn for hundreds of guests.
That Great Lawn, the scene of so many Hollywood parties, unfurls like a long green carpet behind the house. This second garden area extends from the back terrace of the villa to the Pool Pavilion, and is enclosed by high brick walls punctuated by Italian cypress trees that add to its look of Anglo-Mediterranean symmetry. The borders along the walls are planted with an eye- and nose-catching array of perennials that include old-fashioned, sweetly scented favorites like Rosa ‘Joseph’s Coat’, orange and yellow Cape honeysuckles (Tecoma capensis and T. capensis ‘Aurea’), and Madagascar jasmine (Stephanotis floribunda). Virginia loved trees and would collect seeds or starts of special trees she encountered on her travels. The red powder-puff tree (Calliandra haematocephala), with its year-round display of red puffs, and the cockspur coral tree (Erythrina crista-galli) were two of her favorites.
Virginia and Harry Robinson’s pink-curtained dining room overlooks the magnificent Palm Forest.
The blue-tiled pool at the far end of the Great Lawn is raised just enough so that you don’t see it from the house or even from the lawn. What you do see is the Lily Pond below and, above it, the ornate Beaux-Arts–style Pool Pavilion, built in 1925. In this rarefied world, guests could come by for a game of tennis—Virginia once played against Charlie Chaplin—and relax by the pool afterward. In 2015, two side panels of grass beside the Pool Pavilion were replaced with species of Dymondia, a drought-tolerant genus of South African plants in the daisy family, with dark leaves and bright yellow flowers. Other lawn areas will be replanted with pink vinca from Madagascar that requires watering only once a week.
West of the Great Lawn, a series of descending brick terraces takes you into the Italian Terrace Garden. Thanks to Southern California’s Mediterranean climate, an enormous variety of trees and plants grows on these sunny slopes, but the overall design and the presence of Italian cypress and olive trees, rosemary bushes, bay laurel hedges, and fragrant cistus immediately evoke the old hillside gardens of Tuscany and the Amalfi coast.
In the camellia collection near the top terrace, have a look at ‘Coco’, the white camellia named for Coco Chanel, one of Virginia’s favorite couturiers. The Musical Stairs, so-called because of the murmuring water that flows in a channel down their center, lead down to the Lion Terrace, guarded by two Italian stone lions. As you descend and explore this area, you’ll find a citrus grove and numerous fruit trees, including persimmon, loquat, pineapple guava, apple, mulberry, avocado, and pomegranate (used as a hedge).
The showstopping coral-red bougainvillea trained along a fence at the end of the tennis court came from a start Virginia brought back from South Africa. You’ll pass it on your way to the Palm Forest, the final highlight of this remarkable estate. Here, brick paths wind through the largest grove of king palms outside Australia. Harry and Virginia started this amazing collection from a few seeds or saplings imported from Queensland; the trees, now endangered in their native habitat, have flourished in Beverly Hills and reseeded themselves to make a forest.
Harry was only fifty-four when he died, but Virginia lived to be ninety-nine, and never left the house and gardens she created. She would go for a walk twice a day, accompanied by her majordomo, and right up to the end there was hell to pay if she encountered a hose left out after watering.
An antique Italian urn resides in a field of asphodels at Virginia Robinson Gardens.
