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UPDATE: Stanford has closed almost its entire campus to outside visitors at least through the end of the year.
Getting antsy? Already hiked all your favorite park trails? There are botanical gardens and sculpture gardens sprinkled across the Bay Area, from Santa Cruz to San Francisco and the East Bay, just waiting to be strolled.
It could be argued that the entire Stanford University campus is one huge, diverse garden. Its vibrant green places include the Oval, gardens small and large — and trees, so many of them, from avocados to zelkovas, lining roads and pathways. And its sculpture gardens are striking.
Hidden among these gardens are gems few non-Cardinals even know about: a fountain that can’t keep a secret, an estate garden minus the estate, the skull of a beloved cat buried in ceremonial ground. Each garden begs us to temporarily (and safely) leave our outposts of isolation to visit, to explore and, befitting the rich educational heritage of Stanford, to learn.
Last week, we spotlighted the hidden garden gems at Stanford’s cross-bay rival, the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Let’s see what we can find at Stanford, where “die Luft der Freiheit weht” — the university where “the winds of freedom blow.”
The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden
Stanford is known for its Rodin Sculpture Garden (be sure to check it out), but many overlook the unique jaw-dropping sculptures in the Papua New Guinea garden.
The eclectic garden opened in 1996, but its origins lie with an anthropology grad student, Jim Mason, who thought a space like this, tucked in a towering oak grove, would reflect a more global view, rather than the western ideals reflected by the campus’ buildings and other gardens.
Mason worked with 10 artists from Papua New Guinea and landscape architects Kora Korawali and Wallace Ruff to create a garden full of sculptures, carved and painted on site. Visitors will find works reflective of Papua New Guinea culture, as well as the artists’ interpretations of Rodin’s “The Thinker” and “The Gates of Hell.”
The garden layout includes diagonal paths that represent the Sepik River, the region where the carvers lived, and the open space emulates the ceremonial grounds with animistic sculptures, although these are decorative and not ceremonial.
Pause for a few moments at the center pole of the garden. Mason’s cat died while the garden was being created and the artists, following their culture’s tradition of burying the skulls of their honored ones beneath ceremonial poles, afforded Mason’s cat the honor.
The California Native Garden
Few gardens have the variety of this untidy, natural expanse, which features native botanical plants, left pretty much to grow as they will. The garden, designed and installed by landscape artist Meg Webster in 2002, contains such Golden State stalwarts as sage, carpenteria, manzanita and toyon, along with a small redwood grove.
To find the California Native Garden, you’ll need to put on your deer-stalking cap. One small sign marks the garden entrance alongside the Keck Chemistry Building on Roth Way. Once there, prepare to wend your way through the garden along a path edged (and sometimes covered) by the plants.
The Centennial Green
Centennial Green is one of Stanford’s more traditional gardens, featuring a swath of sweet blooming, bubblegum-pink roses.
The highlight in this garden is the Centennial Fountain, which commemorates a century of alumni support. The two-tiered fountain is a welcoming spot, encircled by a concrete bench that bears the names of donors.
It’s a nice spot to sit and relax, but be careful that you don’t share any important secrets. The fountain hides a whispering gallery that amplifies sound.
The Oregon Courtyard
This garden is a salute to the Stanford alumni of Oregon, who offered gifts and donations to the Stanford Restoration Fund after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The fund helped with the repair and renovation of several historic campus buildings.
The design of the garden includes a central, 25-foot diameter courtyard, surrounded by four long rectangular hedges. Cherry trees, a gift to the garden by the Gifu Cherry Blossom Association, fill the beds. The trees bloom in early spring and again, briefly, in autumn.
You’ll find the garden near the iconic Clock Tower, behind what is now the Language Corner of the Main Quad. Don’t be confused by the name etched into a sandstone arch declaring it the Engineering Corner. Things change.
The Memorial Church Garden
The Memorial Church Garden is actually a collection of several gardens, many of them arranged as rooms beneath a sky roof.
A meandering path takes visitors past each room and alongside Memorial Church, dedicated in 1903 and built by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her late husband and cofounder of the university, Leland Stanford. As you move further from the Quad, the mood changes from that of a busy university to quiet, relaxing spaces, each surrounded by different plant collections and all lovely places to sit quietly.
Enclosed by walls of hedges, the first room bears a message inscribed in the pavement: “For the troubled may you find peace — For the despairing may you find hope — For the lonely may you find love — For the skeptical may you find faith.”
Another room, dedicated to former administrator Amy J. Blue, who died in 1988 of brain cancer, contains wooden benches, shrubs that bloom in shades of red, pink and white, and a sundial that promises “I count only sunny hours.”
Other rooms include plantings of redwoods, Japanese and American maples, palms, rhododendron, privet and various grasses, and depending upon the season, different blossoms perfume the air.
Memorial Court
Memorial Court, which is dedicated to the soldiers of World War I, is best known for two things — its rose beds and its Rodin sculptures, seemingly escapees from the Rodin Sculpture Garden.
The Rodin works here were cast in 1981 from the original 1884 molds that tell of the Burghers of Calais, six men whose willingness to sacrifice themselves during the Hundred Years War spared their city and its people from the wrath of Edward III of England.
The sculptures reflect the bravery of ordinary people, a fitting salute to soldiers of the first World War, and a reminder to students of what they too can accomplish.
The Arizona Garden
Once known simply as the “Cactus Garden,” this thriving landscape is one of the oldest gardens at Stanford. It was installed in 1883 and designed as a private garden for the Stanford Mansion. Never been to the mansion? That’s because it was never built. But the garden went ahead as planned.
As the popularity of cactus and succulents has grown among the Bay Area’s water-conscious gardeners, specimens of almost any variety of cactus can be purchased at nurseries, big box stores and even at Target and Safeway. But when the garden was started, cacti weren’t available to purchase in California.
If a euphorbia or an echeveria was calling your name, you had to take a train to the Sonoran Desert and collect it yourself — something that’s banned now.
Because collecting was expensive, the garden became a showcase for Stanford’s wealth. Now, the garden serves as a living museum for some of the oldest specimens around. Landscape architect Rudolf Ulrich planted the garden in three tiers — ground covers, mid-sized plants and large impressive plants. However, Ulrich crowded different varieties together based on an aesthetic and not according to best gardening practices. After 1925, the garden begin falling into disrepair. It was restored in 1997 by volunteers who made the garden more sustainable while maintaining Ulrich’s vision.
Walk through the desert landscape and marvel at the cacti. And if sphinxes are your thing, visit the Stanford Mausoleum nearby.
If You Go
Stanford University welcomes visitors who are respectful of the grounds and the rules regarding coronavirus safety, which means masks are required as well as social distancing.
Visitor parking is available on Lomita Drive and in a nearby parking structure at Roth Way and Campus Drive. On weekdays until 4 p.m., visitors may use marked, metered spots. Parking is free after 4 p.m. and all day on weekends.
Download a walking tour map here.