Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Arthur L. Menzies Garden of California Native Plants

Friday, October 2, 2015

Arthur L. Menzies Garden of California Native Plants

Rhododendron occidentale

Manzanita (Arctostaphylos species)

Iris douglasiana

All photos were taken in April 2014.

Click here for more photos of the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

The Arthur L. Menzies Garden of California Native Plants is the one of the most beautiful & amazing native plant gardens I have seen. It is jam-packed with many different native plants, yet manages to look natural & only somewhat cultivated, at the same time. It covers 4 acres of the San Francisco Botanical Garden (formerly Strybing Arboretum) in Golden Gate Park with arroyos, ponds, woodlands & a wildflower meadow. It is the best-tended site within the botanical garden & the main reason to visit there, in my opinion. This, the arboretum's most popular spring attraction, is most lovely in April & May. I have a great love of native plants in general & California native plants in particular. I studied garden design in San Francisco starting in 1988, the same year the redesign of the native plant garden was installed. The new garden was designed by the San Francisco landscape architect Ron Lutsko Jr. & won a National Award of Merit from the American Society of Landscape Architects. The original native plant garden dates back to 1960. Another amazing California native plant garden is the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, which rivals this one. It is located in Claremont in the Los Angeles area & focuses on the ecosystems of the southern part of the state.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.