Filoli's spring finery

For a globe-trotting garden writer, the opulence of this famed California estate never fails to impress

Words and photos by Janet Davis

• Print
• Email
• comment

Have you ever dreamed about the kind of garden you’d create if you had unlimited funds? I had my own glorious delusions walking through the formal gardens of Filoli, just 48 kilometres south of San Francisco. The trouble is, even with loads of money and beautiful surroundings, it is unlikely anyone could come close to designing as perfect a garden as the one that has graced this 655-acre California estate for 90 years. Why? Because it would be impossible to assemble the 21st-century equivalent of the team of Arts-and-Crafts-inspired architects, artists and landscape designers who had a hand in its glorious inception. I first visited Filoli in 1996 on a garden tour of the Bay region. That week, we’d seen a series of spectacular gardens in Napa and Sonoma, Berkeley and Oakland, as well as the San Francisco Botanical Garden and Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Our final stop was this historic estate in Woodside, a well-to-do enclave in the wooded foothills of the Coast Range near Stanford University, home to celebrities such as Joan Baez, Neil Young, Michelle Pfeiffer and a score of Silicon Valley CEOs.

(continued below)

ne country, we were awestruck as we parked in front of the wisteria-wreathed portico of the stately, U-shaped mansion. An eclectic mix of Georgian and, among others, Colonial Spanish architecture from an era that’s been called a “Golden Age” in California’s history, we now understood why the producers of the 1980s television series Dynasty deemed it a perfect setting for the dysfunctional Carrington clan. The house was completed in 1917 for William Bowers Bourn II, owner of the Empire (gold) Mine. Bourn coined the name for his new estate by combining the first two letters of the three tenets of his philosophy: “Fight for a just cause. Love your fellow man. Live a good life.” In 1937, Filoli was sold to another prominent San Francisco family, the Roths, who added to the gardens—especially orchids and camellias—during their four decades there.

Filoli’s gardens occupy 16 acres behind and southeast of the house, and include an expansive daffodil meadow; an orchard planted with heritage fruit trees; a swimming pool and bowling green; and two large terraces immediately behind the house. But it’s the intimate scale of the half-dozen or so smaller gardens that I loved, with their precise boxwood hedges, English laurel walls and columns of sombre Irish yew. Among them is the Sunken Garden behind Filoli’s garden shop, with its serene reflecting pool and stunning backdrop of mist-shrouded mountains. Brick steps lead from there into a charming Italianate tea house filled with fragrant spring bulbs and caged doves. Nearby is the Chartres Cathedral Window Garden, designed to recall the “Tree of Life” stained-glass window in France’s Chartres Cathedral, with jewel-coloured tulips, aubrieta and violas representing the stained glass, and the boxwood parterres suggesting the lead design between the glass panes. The craftsmanship in both house and garden is exquisite and Vancouver nurseryman Thomas Hobbs, who was on the tour, remembers admiring “the brickwork, walls, steps and gorgeous iron railings.” Six years later, I visited Filoli again while attending the annual mid-March San Francisco Flower & Garden Show (amazingly inventive and a horticultural must-see; gardenshow.com). On my own this time, I took Caltrain, getting off 50 minutes later at Menlo Park station where I took a $30 taxi ride to the garden. Given that it was a cool, drizzly morning in early spring, I was not prepared to be swept off my feet a second time. But the same magical feeling filled me as I sat in the Knot Garden with its precisely clipped, interwoven hedges of red barberry, lavender, silvery santolina and germander. In the Wedding Place Garden, frothy, white Clematis armandii dripped from the high walls, filling the enclosed space with its almond scent. And in the Woodland Garden, rhododendrons and camellias were in resplendent bloom while purple Cyclamen coum lit up the shadows under towering trees. For me, a visit to Filoli offers a glimpse into the opulence and privilege that characterized the lives of the trail-blazing industrialists of the early 20th century—men like Bourn who could hire the best architects and surround themselves with the pastoral beauty of nature. And Filoli’s gardens, expansive and formal as they are, offer valuable design lessons to those who garden in much more humble circumstances—people like me, that is. Now, if only I had my own gold mine… Filoli is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and is open to the public from mid-February until the end of October. For more information, visit filoli.org or call (650) 364-8300. **More gardens to visit in San Francisco** * San Francisco Botanical Garden Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park is home to SFBG with its magnificent collection of Mediterranean plants and succulents, among many others. Be sure to visit the Japanese Tea Garden nearby. sfbotanicalgarden.org * Yerba Buena Gardens A complex of gardens adjoining the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco, it features a children’s rooftop garden of more than 100,000 square feet, and a 5.4-acre grassy esplanade that includes the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. yerbabuenagardens.com * Muir Woods National Monument Stroll under towering 1,000-year-old redwood trees in the 294 acres of old-growth coastal redwoods in this 554-acre park dedicated to naturalist John Muir. It’s 19 kilometres north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Mill Valley. visitmuirwoods.com

Your name:

Comment:

Shop

Find plants, flowers, garden tools, designers and hardware in your area: West | Prairies | Central or Atlantic

Ask a Pro

"Where can I purchase Japanese blood grass?"

• Read the answer
• Ask a question

video

• Hook-Up a Rain Barrel
• Creating Container Magic
• Eco-Friendly Garden Ideas
• Top Outdoor Living Trends