History
The Garden began in the early 1950s as a private collection within Bancroft Farm, a 400-acre (1.6 km2) property bought by publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft (grandfather of Ruth's husband Phillip) in the 1880s 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.
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.Today the Garden is an outstanding landscape of xerophytes (dry-growing plants).
Read more about this topic: Ruth Bancroft Garden
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