A succulent sanctuary across the bay

In the lovely benign weather of spring, when it’s neither too warm nor too chilly and many plants are at their peak bloom, garden visiting beckons.

With the drought expected to drag into another year, many people have curbed planting in their gardens to save water. But public gardens can serve as an important stand-in for our own.

One particular Bay Area garden — the 3 ½-acre Ruth Bancroft Garden — is more than an artistic and otherworldly place. It also is a model for what a drought-tolerant garden can look like. Founded by Ruth Bancroft in 1972, the garden in Walnut Creek is celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year.

The garden is a well-known collection of succulents and other drought-tolerant plants from around the world. The singular aesthetic of the garden was developed by the late Bancroft, who painted or composed with plants to create layered textural and colorful scenes of contrasting foliage both simple and dramatic.

The artistic scenes are fantastical in appearance and surprises abound. The plants are not laid out in paint-by-numbers groupings or in a scientific setting, but are arranged naturalistically.

Striking agaves, aloes and other focal-point plants combine with soft and billowing shrubs, creeping succulents and spiky cactuses. There is a feast of visually striking plants, unusual flowers and plant combinations to take in. Besides plant compositions, some plants like the Agave americana, commonly called the century plant, are so large they appear unreal and distort our sense of space and scale. It’s a garden to visit many times and in many seasons.

The collection is outstanding and is sourced from Mexico, South America, Australia, South Africa, Africa and the Middle East. It’s the result of the longtime collaboration between Bancroft and curator Brian Kemble, who has been at the garden for 42 years. He is also responsible for hybridizing plants like aloes and agaves.

Bancroft Garden backstory

Bancroft, who died in 2017 at age 109, grew up in North Berkeley at a time when there was far more open land.

Her interest in gardening and wildflowers began around the family house, with no encouragement from anyone. Her father was a professor of Latin at UC Berkeley. She studied architecture but wound up with a teacher’s certificate instead after the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into a Depression.

She met her husband, Philip Bancroft, in Merced while teaching there. He studied art and philosophy at Harvard but always knew he eventually would oversee his father’s walnut and pear orchards in Walnut Creek. In a 1991 interview, Ruth Bancroft described Ygnacio Valley Road very near the Bancroft Garden as having walnut trees on both sides with canopies that joined and cast a cooling shade on hot days.

When the road was widened, the trees were cut down. In the 1970s, the Bancrofts began to sell portions of the farm for residential development. Today the garden is a small oasis surrounded by busy roads and dense suburbia that completely disappears as soon as you enter.

It started at a sale

Ruth Bancroft’s fascination with succulents was sparked at a private estate sale in the 1950s where she found some succulents, including Aeonium ‘Glen Davidson.’

She was so smitten by this plant that it ignited a lifelong interest in dry-garden plants, though she had been interested in wildflowers, irises and roses for some time. She began collecting succulents and cactuses on family vacations in Southern California.

Walnut Creek was too cold for many of those plants then, and she overwintered them in a greenhouse. When part of the walnut orchard had to be removed due to grafting incompatibilities, Ruth, then in her 60s, was given a 3-acre garden space by her husband. She engaged Lester Hawkins to lay out the garden.

Hawkins was known for his original ideas and, along with Marshall Olbrich, started Western Hills Nursery in Occidental. Beginning in 1972, Ruth planted the garden over time with plants from small containers. She described in one interview how no one noticed the garden for years, but she kept gardening because she wanted to.

By 1988, Bancroft was concerned about what would happen to her garden after her retirement. Plants man Frank Cabot came to see the garden and the experience inspired him to start a nonprofit organization to preserve significant American gardens, later called The Garden Conservancy, now a national organization that preserves, shares and celebrates American gardens and gardening traditions. The Ruth Bancroft Garden was the first garden they engaged.

Today, as we experience changes in our climate and precipitation levels, many of us are looking for a new garden aesthetic and composition. The Ruth Bancroft Garden, begun many years ago by the visionary Bancroft and nurtured and developed into further expositions of beauty, interest and applicability by Kemble, is open to the public. A visit any time is a pleasure.

The garden has a nursery and gift store. Webinar classes are offered through the website, ruthbancroftgarden.org, where you also can find virtual tours and excellent information sheets on what’s blooming each month and where to find these plants in the garden.

The Annual Gala is scheduled for May 13th to celebrate the garden’s Golden Jubilee. The garden is at 1552 Bancroft Road, Walnut Creek. It is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission is $10, or $8 for seniors, students and active military. Free for kids under age 12. For information, call 925-944-9352.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact Kate at: katebfrey@gmail.com, freygardens.com, Twitter @katebfrey.