Ruth Bancroft Garden
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The Ruth Bancroft Garden 2.5 acres (10,000 m²) is a dry botanical garden containing more than 2,000 cactus, succulents, trees, and shrubs native to Africa, Australia, California, Chile, and Mexico. It is located at 1500 Bancroft Road in Walnut Creek, California, USA. In 1989, it became the first garden in the United States to be preserved by the Garden Conservancy, and has been open to the public since 1992.
The Garden began in the early 1950s as the private collection within Bancroft Farm, a 400 acre property bought by publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft as an orchard for pears and walnuts. In the 1950s, Ruth Bancroft brought home a single succulent, an aeonium grown by Ms. Glenn Davidson. By 1972, the collection had outgrown its location and was moved to its current site, then an orchard of dying walnut trees. Today the Garden is an outstanding landscape of xerophytes (dry-growing plants).
Garden collections include: aeonium, aloes, agavaceae, Brachychiton rupestris, Brahea armata, bromeliaceae, Butia, dudleya, dyckia, echeverias, Echinocactus, hechtia, Jubaea chilensis, Puya berteroniana and P. chilensis, Xanthorrhoea preissii, and yuccas.
