AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Blake Garden is a 10.5-acre botanical landscape tucked into the Kensington hills above San Francisco Bay, stewarded by UC Berkeley's Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning. What began in 1922 as a private family garden designed by two pioneering women—Anita Blake and her sister Mabel Symmes—has evolved into a living laboratory of over 1,200 plant species, set against sweeping views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.↗↗↗
The garden is organized into five distinct outdoor "rooms," each reflecting a different climate, theme, or design tradition—from an Italian-inspired formal garden with koi pond to a shady redwood canyon, a Mediterranean terrace, an Australian wetland hollow, and an Islamic four-part garden. Admission is free, no reservation is required, and weekday mornings draw birdwatchers, families, students, and wedding photographers in roughly equal measure.↗↗
A Century of Living Design
In the early 1920s, Anson and Anita Blake—a Berkeley alumnus and his classmate—moved to a rugged hillside in Kensington after the university acquired their former property near campus for Memorial Stadium. They chose the site for its expansive bay views and unusual lawsonite rock outcroppings. Before the house was even finished, Anita and her sister Mabel Symmes, one of the first students enrolled in UC Berkeley's landscape architecture program, planted dense windbreaks of laurel, coast redwood, and Canary Island pine to shelter the garden from marine fog and western winds.
