Blake Garden (Kensington, California)

Blake Garden (10.9 acres) is a botanical garden located at 70 Rincon Road in Kensington, California, United States. It is a teaching facility for the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning of the University of California, Berkeley. It is also the site of Blake House, the official residence of the President of the University of California. The garden is open to the public during weekdays; no admission fee is charged.

Garden development began in the early 1920s when Anson Stiles Blake and his wife Anita Day Symmes of Berkeley sought a new site for their home to make way for the university's proposed football stadium. In 1957 the Blakes deeded their house and garden to the University, and title passed to the University upon Anson Blake's death in 1962. Five years later, Blake House became the UC President's official residence.

The garden includes over 1200 species of established plants laid out within a formal, Italian-style garden with long reflecting pool, water garden, a grotto, a two-sided staircase, as well as an arboretum and views of a Mediterranean garden.

References

• Visiting Eden: The Public Gardens of Northern California, photographs by Melba Levick, text by Joan Chatfield-Taylor. Chronicle Books, 1993, ISBN 0-8118-0107-1

See also

• List of botanical gardens in the United States

External links

• Official site