Winter House

One wing of Ruth’s Folly is known as Winter House, a kind of greenhouse where the tenderest plants overwinter. The structure is typically covered with landscape cloth, but during the winter months it is covered with visqueen and warmed naturally by the sun and artificially by a heater.

Winter House from outside.

From the outside and backlit by the sun, Winter House looks a like an underwater aquarium or a science fiction movie set. But inside, it is cozy and inviting, with the morning sun streaming in through the windows.

Winter house from inside.

The two Ruths and I appreciated stepping out of the crisp morning air and into its warm interior before starting our tour of The Ruth Bancroft Garden. Several succulents were blooming, including a Euphorbia and several aloes.

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After our tour, we ended up in Winter House, which also doubles as the gift store. The enclosure had become quite warm between the heater and the sun, and the Euphorbia blossoms were glistening with nectar. We enjoyed the heat, light, and fragrance while making our selections from the gift store (including bulbs from The Ruth Bancroft Garden private collection and breeding program).

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Shady Ideas in Winter

When I visited The Ruth Bancroft Garden in the summer of 2011, I was taken with the long arbor, which provides shade for tender succulents in the hot sun (see Shady Ideas). Under the arbor grows a border, planted with succulents, cactus, and Mediterranean plants in keeping with the garden’s theme. I was just as taken with the winterized version of this arbor, which is transformed with visqueen into an “other-worldly” green house.



Exterior view of the winterized arbor.

In this protected environment, plants grow, bloom, and carry out their normal life cycle. Recently the Garden obtained the special rocks they use to construct raised garden beds. The crushed rocks, mixed with organic material and soil, provide the good drainage these plants require. The rocks are native - quarried locally near Mount Diablo. With the reworked garden beds and the protected environment, the tender border thrives through the winter.

Inside view of the protected greenhouse.

During our docent-led tour, with no exterior views to distract us, we could focus on the variety and details of the plants before us. Some plants were blooming, or preparing to bloom; some exhibited beautiful color variations; some looked like they belonged in the ocean; and some looked like creatures out of an old Sci Fi movie!

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The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Winter

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting The Ruth Bancroft Garden in winter with my gardening buddy, Ruth, and her mother Ruth (I was seriously outnumbered by “Ruths”). We picked a beautiful, sunny, crisp, Saturday (a welcome break after many weeks of rainy, gray weather). I reported on my visit to the garden in the heat of summer back in 2011, during which I took the self-guided tour (see The Ruth Bancroft Garden). One of my ongoing research projects this year is to visit San Francisco Bay Area gardens throughout the seasons, to study plants, trees, and infrastructure through seasonal cycles. This visit we took the docent-led tour, and learned even more about the garden.

Ruth's Folley winterized – visqueen protects the winter house, and individual plants

The Ruth Bancroft Garden is a collection of succulents, cacti, and plants from desert and Mediterranean climates all over the world. The garden is designed for beauty, not as a botanical collection by region, but plants are discreetly marked with tags, so you can learn their Latin names. Many of the plants are from extreme, harsh climates, so you would think they would do well in the heat of Walnut Creek. Our docent explained that many of the plants are adapted to cold weather and to wet weather, but not cold and wet weather. This presents some challenges for the garden during the Bay Area’s winter season of rain, frost, fog, and cold. One solution is to build framed, visqueen structures around some of the most vulnerable and tender plants (my folks in Southeast Alaska use a similar approach to protect a tender Rhododendron from snow, using burlap).

The pond in winter.

 You might think this practical approach would lessen the garden’s beauty. Instead it gives it a mysterious and other-worldly look. You can view a soft focus version of the plant through the visqueen, and then easily lift a venting flap for an unobstructed view and snap a picture. We found a surprising number of plants in bloom or close to blooming (apparently many aloes are winter-blooming). This attracted many pollinators, so the air hummed with bird and bee activity. We learned that many of the succulents have hybridized in the garden. I recommend taking the docent-led tour, and visiting the garden any time of the year. To learn more: http://www.ruthbancroftgarden.org/.

Protected tender palm	Cactus cluster with berries
Blooming barrel cactus	Texture

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Natural Raised Beds

Many desert and Mediterranean plants can live in nutrient poor soil, but most of them require great drainage. I have observed this in my desert travels, where the soil is very rocky and porous, and the terrain is frequently a sloping plain. These plants do not like wet feet! This presents a problem if you are growing a dry garden in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the soil is wet, heavy, and often nutrient rich.

California native plants on a raised berm.

The Ruth Bancroft Garden met this challenge by importing crushed rock from Mount Diablo, and creating large berms or mounds for their planting areas. These natural raised beds provide good drainage for the dry garden. They have also amended the heavy alluvial soil with organic matter to create lighter, more porous soil.

Cacti planted on a raised mound.

This technique of creating berms or mounds for dry gardens can be adapted for the home garden. On a small scale, a container, such as a clay pot, can be incorporated into the garden design to provide good drainage for dry-loving plants.

Shady Ideas

The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek implements an extensive arbor (or pergola) to incorporate shade into the garden design. Planted under the arbor is a succulent border, reminiscent of an English border garden, but with the water conserving plants of desert and Mediterranean climates. Besides providing shade for the plants, the structure seems to cool the air in close proximity, and capture any passing breeze.

The arbor provides shade for the succulant border.

The arbor is a simple wood frame, covered with shade cloth, which is available at garden supply and hardware stores, and on the web (for example, Coolaroo sells shade cloth by the yard: http://www.coolaroousa.com/).

The arbor is constructed of a wooden frame and shade cloth.

This is a wonderful, practical idea for gardens in hot, dry climates, and could easily be adapted on a smaller scale for the home garden. This is also a great example of adapting a garden style, in this case the English border garden, to the local climate or microclimate.

The Ruth Bancroft Garden

Admittedly, visiting a dry, prickly garden in Walnut Creek in the heat of day at the height of summer does not sound that appealing. But I love the desert ecosystem and went anyway. I’m glad I did. The Ruth Bancroft Garden is well established with the perfect combination of trees for shade, a water treatment, and artful beds of succulents, cacti, and Mediterranean plants from all over the world. On the afternoon I visited, there was a continual breeze, lots of shade, and very pleasant. I was surprised to see some plants in bloom, including agave, cacti, and several varieties of trees and bushes. The air hummed with the activities of bees, butterflies, and birds.

Ruth's Folley - houses small store and greenhouse.

Ruth Bancroft started collecting succulents in the 1950s; in 1972 she worked with Lester Hawkins of Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, CA to design the dry garden in Walnut Creek. The three-acre parcel was originally part of the 400 acres of native oak trees that Hubert Howe Bancroft cleared in the 1880s for a fruit and walnut orchard. The garden design is a series of paths and garden beds planted with Ruth’s collection.

The pond forms a focal point for the garden.

The garden has a primitive, primal feel to it – I almost expected a dinosaur to appear around a bed of wild looking plants, or to come swooping in from an opening in the tree canopy. This amused me, but I think it expresses the feeling the garden conveys. Many of the plants are monocots – ancient plants, with simple (but amazing) strategies for conserving water and reproducing. I enjoyed my self-guided tour, but plan to return for a docent-guided tour to learn more about the plants, and the garden design. To learn more: http://www.ruthbancroftgarden.org/.

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