Ruth Bancroft Garden
A collection of succulents
Ruth Bancroft Garden is located in San Francisco Bay Area
Ruth Bancroft Garden
Ruth Bancroft Garden
Ruth Bancroft Garden is located in California
Ruth Bancroft Garden
Ruth Bancroft Garden
Ruth Bancroft Garden is located in the United States
Ruth Bancroft Garden
Ruth Bancroft Garden
TypeBotanical garden
Location1552 Bancroft Road, Walnut Creek, California
Coordinates37°55′25.61″N 122°2′14.16″W / 37.9237806°N 122.0372667°W / 37.9237806; -122.0372667
Area2.5 acres (1.0 ha)
Opened1950 (1950)
Websitehttps://www.ruthbancroftgarden.org/

The Ruth Bancroft Garden is a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) public dry garden established by Ruth Bancroft. It contains more than 2,000 cactus, succulents, trees, and shrubs native to California, Mexico, Chile, South Africa, and Australia. It is located at 1552 Bancroft Road in Walnut Creek, California, USA.

History

The Garden began in the early 1950s as Ruth Bancroft's private collection of potted plants within Bancroft Farm, a 400-acre (160 ha) property bought by publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft (grandfather of Ruth's husband Philip) in the 1880s as an orchard for pears and walnuts.[1][2] In the 1950s, Bancroft brought home a single succulent, an Aeonium grown by plant breeder Glenn Davidson.[3] By 1972, the collection was moved to its current site, when the orchard was cut down and the land was rezoned.[3]

In 1989, it became the first garden in the United States to be preserved by The Garden Conservancy, and has been open to the public since 1992.[3] Today the Garden is an outstanding landscape of xerophytes (dry-growing plants). It is open to the public for an admission fee of $8–10.

Collection

Trees, succulents, and other plants at the Garden.

Garden collections include the following plants:

  1. ↑ Relocation Walnut Creek (retrieved 29 October 2010)
  2. ↑ Bancroft, Ruth (1991–1992). "The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California: Creation in 1971, and Conservation" (PDF) (Interview). Interviewed by Suzanne B. Riess. Berkeley, California: Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Silver, Johanna (2016). The Bold Dry Garden: Lessons from the Ruth Bancroft Garden. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press. ISBN 9781604696707.

See also

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Ruth Bancroft Garden.


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