The desert-themed gardens at Sunnylands Center and Gardens are a new addition to the Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage.
The desert-themed gardens at Sunnylands Center and Gardens are a new addition to the Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage.
Yucca brevifolia, the Joshua tree, grows in the higher elevations of the Mojave Desert in Joshua Tree National Park.
74485 National Park Drive, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277
Visit February–April for cactus flowers and spring wildflower season
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(760) 367-5500 |
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Park open daily year-round 24 hours; visitor centers at north and south park entrances, at Oasis of Mara in Twentynine Palms, and at Black Rock campground are generally open 8am–5pm; check website for individual hours and locations |
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Admission fee; park pass is good for 12 months and covers all passengers in a single vehicle |
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Dogs on leash |
A national treasure, with spring-blooming wildflowers, unusual flora and fauna, and namesake Joshua trees
If you’ve been struck by the powerful beauty of cacti and other desert plants in California gardens, consider an excursion to Joshua Tree National Park. Located in the Little San Bernardino Mountains about fifty miles northeast of Palm Springs (140 miles east of Los Angeles), Joshua Tree provides a unique and unforgettable opportunity to get up close and personal with a vast desert landscape and the different forms of plant and animal life it supports. I would strongly urge you to visit between February and April, when many of the cacti and desert wildflowers are in bloom. And I would just as strongly discourage you from visiting in the summer when temperatures can soar to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
Two great American deserts, the Colorado and the Mojave, meet and overlap at Joshua Tree National Park. The park encompasses about 1,250 square miles, three-quarters of it designated wilderness. There are various drives and designated hikes and trails that will give you insights into the history, geology, animal life, and botanical wonders found in this forbidding and fragile world. If you’re coming from Palm Springs, the easiest option is to begin at the west entrance and loop through the park to the Oasis of Mara at the north entrance. If you do that, give yourself at least three to four hours to stop, wonder, and explore.
This amazing landscape would not be a protected national park if it weren’t for the tireless efforts of Minerva Hoyt (1866–1945), a Southern belle who became a passionate desert conservationist. Marriage took her from a plantation in Mississippi to a socialite’s life in New York. Eventually she moved to Pasadena, where she became an avid gardener at a time when cacti and desert plants were routinely used for home landscaping. Her passion was ignited when she saw firsthand the rampant destruction that was taking place in California’s deserts. People were literally looting the landscape—uprooting and hauling away cacti and other native desert plants for their home gardens. After the death of her husband and son, Minerva channeled all her energies into raising awareness about the threatened desert landscapes. In 1936, after Minerva had crusaded for more than a decade to get California’s deserts protected as national parks, President Roosevelt designated 825,000 acres of desert as the Joshua Tree National Monument. It received national park status in 1994.
An ocotillo in the starkly dramatic desert landscape at Joshua Tree National Park.
The western half of the park is the Mojave Desert. In this high desert, above 3,000 feet, you’ll see the Joshua trees the park is named for. The trees are an unforgettable sight, reaching heights of 40 feet (at a growth rate of an inch per year) with thick trunks and upraised limbs that give them a muscular and at times tortured appearance. They were supposedly given their name by the Mormon soldiers who marched through the desert in 1846 on their way to wrest San Diego and all Alta California from Mexico. The Mormons likened the tree’s outstretched branches to the strong, beckoning arms of Joshua, a Biblical figure who led the Israelites through the desert.
The Joshua tree is not a cactus, as many think, but a species of yucca (Yucca brevifolia) adapted to live at these higher elevations where six to eight inches of rain falls a year, and temperatures drop dramatically at night. Its thin, waxy leaves help it to conserve moisture in the parched summer months.
Over a dozen species of cacti make their home in the Mojave and the lower-elevation Colorado desert. Keep your eyes peeled and you’ll encounter barrel cactus and prickly pear, botanical icons of the Old West, as well as hedgehog, foxtail, beavertail, and mound cactus. Seeing these ancient, spiny, hard-working plants in full vibrant bloom is what makes a visit to Joshua Tree such a memorable experience. The forms and the flowering patterns they have adapted to survive and reproduce is nothing short of amazing. Parry’s nolina, for example, sends out a tall, feathery spray of blooms. The spiky leaves atop the Mojave yucca seem to hold aloft its thick white flower clusters. When conditions are right, red flowers open like flames on the tips of the many-branched ocotillo, drawing hummingbirds. Many such thin-stemmed and small-leaved shrubs and trees have also adapted to the harsh conditions of the Mojave. On the desert’s rocky hillsides, gravelly slopes, sandy washes, and vast open flats, you’ll see flowering shrubs like brittlebrush (Encelia farinosa); chuparosa (Justicia californica), with its multitude of red-orange flowers; yellow-flowering desert senna (Senna armata); and the lavender-hued Mojave aster (Xylorhiza tortifolia). Pinyon pines, junipers, scrub oaks, and ironwood trees also survive in parts of the park.
This hauntingly austere landscape, with its gigantic rock formations sculpted over eons by scorching desert winds, is home to a variety of birds, mammals, lizards, and insects, all marvelously adapted, like the plants, to the parched environment.
The Colorado Desert in the eastern half of the park is part of the much larger, and lower in elevation, Sonoran Desert. This huge, griddle-hot desert ecosystem in the Lower Colorado River Basin stretches across parts of Arizona and Mexico. The vegetation is different from the Mojave, dominated by creosote, ocotillo, and palo verde trees with their green trunks and leaves that turn bright yellow. If you visit the Cholla Cactus Garden, you’ll see many different varieties of cholla. Don’t get too close, though. The jumping cholla cactus got its name because it will hitch a ride on anyone or anything that brushes against it.
In the spring, eye-popping displays of wildflowers add brilliant daubs of color to the sere desert landscape. Flowering times for spring annuals can change from year to year, depending on winter precipitation and temperatures. The plants start blooming first in the lower elevations of the Colorado Desert, usually in February, around Pinto Basin and along the park’s south boundary. Wildflowers may bloom as late as June in the higher elevations of the Mojave. Look for the brilliant orange-red mariposa lily (Calochortus kennedyi); the ghost flower (Mohavea confertiflora), its white petals sprinkled with reddish spots; the purple-blue stalks of Arizona lupine (Lupinus arizonicus); and the desert lily (Hesperocallis undulata), its tall stalk covered with striking white blossoms.
Thousands of years ago, after the glaciers of the last ice age receded, this environment was wetter and cooler than it is today. The people of the Pinto culture may have arrived more than 10,000 years ago. They and later native peoples lived on and near the Oasis of Mara, where underground springs allowed palm trees to flourish and other lush vegetation to grow. The life-giving waters of the oasis were channeled away by the miners, cattle ranchers, and homesteaders who began to arrive in the mid-nineteenth century, displacing the ancient native peoples of the desert. Their ruinous disregard for the fragile ecology of the desert led to the kind of wholesale destruction that moved Minerva Hoyt to take action back in the 1920s. In 2012, a mountain peak in the park was named Mount Minerva Hoyt, in her desert-loving honor.
On your trip to Joshua Tree, bring water, sunscreen, and a hat; there are no goods or services and limited facilities within the park. Some areas of the park are designated for day use only.
Cacti and desert plant aficionados in Palm Springs will enjoy a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden (1701 South Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264; (760) 327-6555; admission fee; open Thurs–Tues 10am–4pm). The Moorten estate, called Desertland, is a one-of-a-kind relic of old Palm Springs, reminiscent of the homegrown attractions that once dotted America’s highways. It was established in 1938 by Chester “Cactus Slim” Moorten and his wife Patricia. Slim Moorten, one of the original Keystone Kops of silent-film fame, moved to Palm Springs for his health. As the Moortens’ interest in cacti and desert plants grew, they traveled throughout the Southwest and Baja deserts and down through Mexico to Guatemala, collecting specimens. Now their son Clark is the curator of this intriguing one-acre garden, where some 3,000 varieties of desert plants from throughout the world are arranged according to geographical region. There are some fascinating specimens to be seen outdoors and in the Cactarium (greenhouse). Interspersed with cacti, agaves, and other succulents are cardoon and boojum trees, petrified rocks, crystals, and desert memorabilia. If you’re interested in bringing a thorny friend home with you, check out the plant nursery.
To showcase their dramatic forms and vivid colors, cacti and succulents are planted en masse at the new Sunnylands Center and Gardens.
37977 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270
Visit February–April for maximum blooms
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(769) 202-2222 |
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Center and gardens open Thurs–Sun 8:30am–4pm; check website for exact dates (reserve far in advance to tour Annenberg estate) |
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Center and gardens admission free; fee to tour Annenberg estate |
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No dogs |
A unique desert oasis created with today’s drought-tolerant plants and sustainable gardening practices
The Annenberg fortune started with a racing form and a scandal. After Moe Annenberg, publisher of the Daily Racing Form and the Philadelphia Inquirer, got sent to prison for tax evasion, his son, Walter, sought to rehabilitate the family’s name and lost fortunes. In 1942, Walter took over his father’s failing business and turned it into a media giant that was eventually sold to Rupert Murdoch for $3 billion. Along the way, besides starting TV Guide and Seventeen magazines, Walter Annenberg collected art; hobnobbed with presidents, royalty, and celebrities; became U.S. ambassador to Great Britain; and turned his attention to philanthropy and public service. I mention all this because Sunnylands Center and Gardens is part of the Annenberg estate and wouldn’t exist without Annenberg money. It’s a wonderful garden to visit. Not only is it a beautifully unique desert garden, it was created with today’s sustainable gardening and building practices in mind. It’s not often that we get to enjoy a contemporary public garden of this caliber—and at no charge.
Sunnylands, Walter and Leonore Annenberg’s 202-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, is sometimes called the Camp David of the West because of all the presidents and heads of state who were guests there. The Annenbergs built their 22,000-square-foot midcentury modern house in 1966 and wintered there for the next thirty-three years. The interiors were done by Billy Haines, Hollywood’s first openly gay actor who later became decorator to the stars. Annenberg’s billion-dollar collection of French Impressionist works hung on the walls (they now hang in the Metropolitan Museum in New York). Frank Sinatra sang at the Annenbergs’ soirees, Bob Hope emceed, and a constant stream of guests drawn from the worlds of politics, royalty, and entertainment enjoyed the lavish hospitality of Sunnylands. The Annenbergs were so rich and so exacting that one person was hired just to replace broken potato chips in a bowl in the guest wing. Much of the outdoor space was a private nine-hole golf course. When the grass turned brown—as grass tends to do in the desert—it was painted green so as not to cause offense. You can visit their house if you book a tour months in advance. Touring the grounds of the estate via an open minivan is easier and less expensive. Although Sunnylands’ golf course landscaping is mighty boring, you’ll get a glimpse of the house where the soirees were legendary because of the legends that partied there.
Fallen leaves and flowers from palo verde trees add a sweep of yellow to the beds at Sunnylands Center and Gardens.
But you don’t need to do any of that, really, because the new Sunnylands Center and Gardens are the most enjoyable part of a visit to Sunnylands—for garden lovers, anyway. Spend an hour or two exploring the garden, then maybe have lunch, coffee, or a glass of wine in the café.
The center, which opened in 2012, is like an updated version of the midcentury modern style of the Annenbergs’ palatial home. It’s meant to interpret and promote the Annenberg legacy and largesse. Your first view of the nine-acre garden that surrounds the center is, according to landscape designer James Burnett, an homage to Van Gogh’s 1889 painting Olive Trees, a work once owned by Walter Annenberg. The bright yellow flowers of palo verde trees (Parkinsonia ‘Desert Museum’) border a circular green lawn beyond a blue reflecting pool, with the San Jacinto Mountains in the distance—all making for a brilliant composition.
The parklike garden draws you in and captures your attention at every turn. The first beds are single-species plantings of cacti and other desert plants. Rows of spiny golden barrel cacti, beaked yuccas, and thorn-tipped aloes and agaves lined up with military precision may not be everyone’s idea of a garden, but the effect is striking and draws attention to the sculptural form of desert plants. Many of the cacti and succulents grow in the dappled shade of the palo verde trees, which drop their bright yellow flowers and leaves among the greens, blues, and grays of the succulents. And in the spring, when red-flowered ocotillos bloom and the yuccas, aloes, and agaves send up their flower stalks, still more color is added.
There’s a restful, even contemplative aspect to the garden behind the center. It encloses you in an environment with many quietly inviting spots to sit and enjoy the plantings and the birds and butterflies they attract. On one side of the Great Lawn, a labyrinth enlivened by trailing smokebush (Dalea greggii) acts as a meditation circle, its design based on similar labyrinths found in medieval European cathedrals. The twin reflecting pools filled with stones are another contemplative feature in the gardens behind the center.
The gardens continue in front, on both sides of the drive from the main entrance to the parking lot. Don’t let your initial drive-through suffice; take a meandering path and enjoy these spaces and the plants in them up close. One side of the driveway is almost entirely taken up by a wildflower meadow. Here, starting in February, you’ll be treated to an ongoing display of arid-environment beauties. Impressionist works formed a backdrop to the Annenbergs’ life at Sunnylands, and re-creating in nature the paintings’ shimmering beauty is an underlying theme of the garden. When you see the meadow with its flowering sages, verbenas, desert marigolds, daisies, and poppies, you might be tempted to take up a paintbrush yourself.
