Celebrate Mother’s Day with a tour of exquisite gardens of old La Jolla!
“Where, you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
(April 15, 2008)--Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a secret place, all your own, where grown-ups never come? For almost a century, few but for students and faculty alike have ventured past the exquisite garden walls that enshrine an Irving Gill-designed school, but that will all change when guests explore all sorts of secret places in gardens selected for this year’s Secret Garden Tour of Old La Jolla, including those protected behind the walls surrounding The Bishop’s School in La Jolla.
The La Jolla Historical Society is proud to unveil the identities of seven gardens lovingly and meticulously maintained during its 10th annual Secret Garden Tour of Old La Jolla on Saturday, May 10, 2008. Plan to attend the Tour with that special lady in your life, just in time for Mother’s Day.
The 10th anniversary Tour will showcase the exquisite La Jolla gardens enhanced by music performed by local musicians, displays by local designers, and celebrated La Jolla artists creating paintings that capture each home and garden’s unique beauty.
Celebrating its storied ten-year history, the Secret Garden Tour, long known for the lip-tight identities of the gardens being showcased until guests check in the morning of the event, decided this year to let loose one of the secrets – the addition of the Bishop’s School gardens commemorating the 100th anniversary in 2009 of the school. In an amazing twist of fate, the chair of this year’s event is also the Coordinator of Gardens and Grounds at the Bishop’s School, Betty Vale.
Much more than a Master Gardener, Vale is a curator of sorts digging deep into the school’s 100-year archives that allowed her to stay true to the vision of the school’s founder, Ellen Browning Scripps as well as maintain the integrity of the school’s designer, Irving Gill. “I included historical photos of the original gardens and proposed a historical restoration,” Vale said of her first foray into the gardens.
“My initial intention was to help assure that, almost 100 years after its original inception, it remains an oasis in the middle of downtown La Jolla where architecture and landscaping merge as one unified element, providing a restful, inspiring educational setting for today’s students, just as it did when it was first built in 1909.”
To that end, Vale, along with a team including Dagoberto “Beto” Rodriquez who has been tending the gardens for 25-years, created serene winding paths with whimsical names such as ‘The Williams Walk,’ and gardens now known as “Ruth Jenkins Garden,” that include the former headmistresses roses, lavender, rosemary and scented geraniums “all of which perfume the air when you brush by them as you walk along the paths,” Vale noted. “The Larmour Lawn,” is in honor of Rosamond Larmour Loomis, the forever-youthful 92-year old former headmistress from 1953 – 1962, who still resides in La Jolla.
The brilliantly conceived Secret Garden Tour of Old La Jolla was originally planned as a membership vehicle for the La Jolla Historical Society. Today, the Tour is the Society’s main fundraiser. Fortunately for the Society and ultimately, the community, its founders, Susan Vandendriesse and Linda Marrone, were talented and creative, adding such magical elements as working artists in the gardens, many of them well-known, and musicians whose instruments combine with the elements that greatly enhance the garden’s beauty. The Secret Garden Tour took its name from the secrecy in which they would approach homeowners and only announcing the gardens to ticket buyers after they arrived the morning of the Tour.
Each garden has always been painstakingly chosen based on what it could lend to the visitor, and as it expanded each year it was attended by only those with a green thumb. Combined architecture and landscape designs throughout the years became the draw and was then attended by that many more so much so the committee had to limit the number of attendees. With all these elements combined, there truly is something for everyone.
Rain or shine, the number of visitors admitted each year is limited, with no independent access. The self-guided tour is $40 for members of La Jolla Historical Society and $50 for nonmembers. Visit www.lajollahistory.org for information about making reservations online or download a reservation application form and mail it in with payment to: LJHS, P.O. Box 2085, La Jolla, CA, 92038. You may also phone the SGT information line, 858-726-0227, for reservation information. Be sure to get yours ASAP because the Secret Garden Tour sells out every year.
