by Victoria Skinner

The walled and woodland gardens of Filoli.

How many New Yorkers actually visit the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty? They assume it is part of their everyday landscape and it will be there when they get around to it or when they next have visitors from out of town. We Californians feel the same way about our beautiful tourists spots, although ours tend to be crafted by nature instead of man-made. Right in our own back yard is one of these magnificent must-sees. You take the Edgewood Road exit off of Highway 280. Go west towards Cañada Road. Turn right onto Cañada and follow it. You will come to an unpretentious sign directing you to the Filoli Center. Rising above the trees, you can see the chimneys of the splendid 36,000-square-foot mansion built in the early 1900s for the Bourn family. But that is a whole other afternoon and article.

The beautiful 654-acre Filoli estate and its 16 acres of formal gardens are a labor of love — and the product of much hard, sweaty work. They are one of the United States’ finest private estate gardens and worth a whole day, or maybe several, of contemplation. The gardens, which were originally designed by Bruce Porter to compliment the beauty of the natural landscape surrounding the house, are now the domain of Lucy Tolmach, director of horticulture and editor-in-chief of the Sundial Times. The gardens are divided into five main areas, four of which are open to the public. These are the main house and visitor center section; the walled and woodland garden; the sunken gardens; and the panel gardens, which have no formal design which include cut flowers, kitchen and rose gardens. The fifth area is the nursery and greenhouses, which aren’t open to the public.

Each area has a lead gardener and an assistant, all of whom are trained horticulturists from prestigious universities. They also have interns, who generally work for a 10-week period and rotate through all the garden areas. The interns come from all over the world, but some come from as close by as UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Local families volunteer to house the interns, usually in exchange for services. What kind of services, you ask? Why gardening, of course. Apprentices, who function much like interns but are there for longer, also labor in the gardens. Once the interns complete their 10-week rotation, they work on special projects set up by Tolmach. These projects range from orchard work to docent fact sheets.

In addition to the interns and apprentices, the gardens could not function without the help of the maintenance department. The maintenance workers handle quite a range of responsibilities: irrigation repair, hard structure work, general maintenance, plumbing, drainage and recycling. “All of them are extremely talented and multi-talented. They are indispensable,” says Wendy Hammond, lead gardener for the woodland and walled garden section. There are also garden volunteers, who come on Monday and Thursday mornings.

Hammond has a degree in horticulture and landscape management from the University of Maryland. A young South African woman, she has been working at Filoli since August 2003. She says, “I saw the job posting on the Filoli Web site for an assistant so I applied and I’ve been here ever since.” She has been lead gardener since April 2006 when the position opened up.

The lead gardeners and their assistants are under the supervision of Lucy Tolmach, who has worked at Filoli since 1977. Tolmach has her bachelor’s degree in plant science-horticulture from the University of Delaware and her master’s degree from UC Davis in environmental horticulture. Interestingly enough, she is married to the head of maintenance, Jonathan Tolmach. They met at Filoli.

My afternoon spent wandering through the magnificent gardens of Filoli infused me with peace and beauty. Everywhere, there is a profusion of color, from the rare mountain camellias, to the 500 rose varieties, to the cutting garden. You can see 200-year-old Irish yew trees lining a walkway called the Yew Allee; the original cuttings were from the Bourn property in Ireland called Muckross House. Other special sites include the boxwood parterre inspired by the famous Jesse Tree of Life window in Chartres cathedral in France. The boxwoods in the stained-glass-window garden at Filoli represent the lead, with multihued roses and other flowers representing the stained glass.

Of course, every self-respecting garden has water in the form of ponds, pools or fountains. Filoli has all three. There is a reflecting pool in the sunken garden, which mirrors the clock tower. A 24-foot by 75-foot swimming pool also reflects the clock tower. The fountains are numerous and melodious; the most beautiful one is a Venetian fountain made of red marble from Verona, which is in a section of the garden called The Wedding Place. The inscription on the gate reads Festina Lente, which is perfect for the garden. Translated, it means “make haste slowly.” I urge you to do just that. Make haste to Filoli and peruse the gardens slowly!

For more information, see www.filoli.org.