In the midst of the hustle and bustle of Palo Alto — where a cutting-edge technology company can be found on nearly every corner, and luxurious cars and homes line the neighborhoods — sits a humble garden, undisturbed and frozen in time.
Here, regal Colonial-style buildings rest on 2.5 acres, with lush green vegetation sprouting up all around. Multicolored flowers peel open their petals and reach towards the sky. People dress in plaid gardening clothes or simple T-shirts, wearing digital cameras around their necks and wide-brimmed sun hats. They walk slowly, savoring the site of one of the city’s oldest properties — the Elizabeth Gamble Garden.
“It’s a place to come and get away,” said Mica Pirie, executive director of the garden, on a recent April afternoon. “My cheesy little thing I say is that it’s a calm in the center of the silicon storm.”
Located off Embarcadero Road in Old Palo Alto, Gamble is a historic public garden dedicated to providing horticultural enrichment and education for community members. Garden staff and volunteers host a number of yearlong events, from educational programs and gardening classes to luncheons and guided tours.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the garden opening to the public — but the Gamble estate has been around for much longer than that.
The property’s three-story house was built in 1902, and served as home to Edwin Gamble, the son of Procter and Gamble’s co–founder, his wife and their four children. Among them was Elizabeth, who would inherit the estate upon her father’s death in 1939.
Over the years, Elizabeth preserved the architecture of the house and filled the estate with elaborate gardens. Smaller buildings were added, including a Tea House in 1948 that served as an area to entertain guests.
When Elizabeth died in 1981, she left her house and garden to the city. For years, the City Council debated what to do with the property, before the Garden Club of Palo Alto led a community campaign to restore and maintain the estate. In 1985, Gamble Garden opened to the public for the first time.
Maintaining the integrity of the buildings is important for volunteers and staff, Pirie said. There’s even a dedicated volunteer group that keeps track of what needs to be maintained — the dark roof tiles, antique lightening system or anything else that has been worn down over time.
The first floor of the house is kept as a little museum filled with old black-and-white photographs of the Gamble family, along with some of their belongings. But other parts of the building at Gamble such as the Tea House and Carriage House have been transformed into elegant gathering spaces.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun and a response to how the community is using the space, and what we want to do for it,” Pirie said.
The building’s architecture is breathtaking, but when spring rolls around and the sun starts to shine, the garden is the main attraction.The area is a hotbed for dozens of flower and edible plant species, which are planted along winding dirt paths. Occasionally, it will also be home to Saturday morning yoga sessions or monthly garden luncheons.
On one hot April morning, Garden Manager Ella Ancheta and Director Cory Andrikopoulos take a break from gardening and lounge in the staff’s break room, which also doubles as a makeshift storage space for more gardening supplies. They talk back and forth, listing out several different flowery attractions that visitors can look forward to in the summer months.
“We’re going to start adding a bunch of fruit trees,” Andrikopoulos said. “The oranges are already blooming.”
Cherry trees are also in season in the spring, Ancheta adds. Their small pink petals flutter every time there’s a breeze. “People stand underneath there, and it’s like they’re getting rained on.”
And then there’s the Puya Flower. Six years ago, staff welcomed the drought-resistant plant to Gamble. No one has seen it bloom — until now. The plant’s stem shoots out from a mass of thin dull-green, spiky and droopy leaves. Its stem resembles the color and structure of asparagus, but once the buds come in, the Puya will look like an intricate bouquet of small flowers.
Then there is Elizabeth Gamble’s favorite flower, the iris. The garden even grows a special type of iris named after her; the pale blue Elizabeth Gamble irises are planted close to the paved pathway so they can be easily seen by visitors. Even Ancheta considers them standouts in a landscape full of delights.
“I’m just so happy when I see them growing well and very vigorously,” she said.
