Garden Oasis by Side of Road : Weary Coast Highway Travelers Find a Peaceful Setting in Corona del Mar
There’s a spot along the Coast Highway where the air is filled with the fragrance of apple mint instead of auto exhaust. Here the eye is caressed by the surprising yellow of marigolds while the ear adjusts to the gentle gushing of fountains. Rolling waves of grass give way to red-arched pathways of brick. And everywhere, delicate sculptures of animals watch over scenes of horticultural serenity as entranced visitors stroll peacefully among the palms.
For 26 years the Sherman Library and Gardens has offered the solace of its spaces to road-weary travelers along Coast Highway. Tucked invisibly behind a high block wall where the road careens noisily between shopping centers, the place is a veritable oasis amid the clamor of cars.
“It’s a different world when you come in here,” says Wade Roberts, the horticulturist who has overseen the gardens since 1966. Indeed, that’s how the place was planned.
What eventually grew into the botanical garden and historical library began in 1940 as a one-room adobe house built by a young couple from the San Joaquin Valley. Back then, Coast Highway was a sparsely traveled road with more dust on it than cars. Promoted heavily by real estate developers and landowners wishing to enhance their property values, this section of the road had opened with much hoopla in 1926 as an extension from Balboa to Laguna Beach. Movie star Mary Pickford cut the ribbon.
In 1940, however, Corona del Mar was still nothing but a handful of houses. To attract attention and make a living, the San Joaquin couple opened a Danish import store on the part of their lot facing the road. Later they sold the property to a company for use as a nursery. Then in 1955, Los Angeles businessman Arnold D. Haskell bought it to use as his office.
Haskell had been the longtime assistant and major heir to Moses Sherman, the wealthy philanthropist famous for developing the first electric railway system in downtown Los Angeles. Long a lover of flora, Haskell began landscaping the old nursery site surrounding the office. During the early 1960s, he gradually acquired the rest of the block. And in 1966, envisioning a spot of tranquillity amid the frantic commercial development he correctly foresaw, the erstwhile Sherman assistant transferred the property into the name of the Sherman Foundation and a public garden was born.
Today the Sherman Library and Gardens occupies 2.2 acres at Dahlia Avenue and Coast Highway that’s easy to miss among the trappings of mercantilism.
Housed in the original adobe and in several rooms added since is a library containing 20,000 volumes, hundreds of pamphlets, several hundred thousand papers and more than two thousand reels of microfilmed material devoted to the history of the Pacific Southwest. At its center is the group of Sherman’s personal papers with which the collection began.
“Knowledge of what went before gives people more of a connection with where they are now,” says William O. Hendricks, the historian who has directed the library since its inception. “Knowing what’s around them makes the community more a part of their lives.”
A research rather than lending institution, the library is frequented by graduate students, historians, academics and novelists, including “Jaws” author Peter Benchley, who visited while doing research on the Southwest.
Just outside the library in a shaded courtyard is a quietly secluded tea garden where volunteers serve soup, crackers and fruit and local civic organizations hold teas or luncheons. And nearby is a gift shop where visitors can buy souvenirs, cards and crafts.
At the core of the place, however, is the botanical gardens. More than 2,000 species of plants reside here ranging from cactus from the deserts of Mexico to staghorn from the tropics of New Guinea. Virtually none are native to California, according to Roberts.
A tropical greenhouse features coconut trees, orchids, lobster claws and Spanish moss. A shade garden is occupied by more than 75 types of begonias and a 30-year-old moosehorn, a type of plant that grows on the bark of a tree. And a “discovery” garden designed especially for blind people features plants of exquisite touch and smell including lamb’s ear, pine apple sage, lemon verbena, silver thyme and Roman chamomile.
“People don’t even know that we’re here,” Roberts complains. “This is a charming little jewel that you can see in an hour or so.”
Yet fewer people are coming since the recession began. Annual attendance, which traditionally averages about 65,000, is down 15% to 20%, according to Roberts. The loss of income from the $2 admission fee has been mirrored by decreases in membership fees and donations. And fewer couples are renting the garden for private weddings, impairing an important source of income for the garden.
As a result, Roberts said, Sherman Library and Gardens had to reduce its $500,000 annual budget by about 20% last year, mainly by laying off employees and cutting back on maintenance. And if the situation continues, he said, the Sherman Foundation will have to trim another $100,000 from its operating expenses this year.
“We’re struggling pretty hard,” Roberts said. “We’ve got volunteers jumping in to pick up hoses.”
To visitors strolling along the gentle garden paths on a recent weekday afternoon, however, such struggles were remote. The simple act of entering the gate seemed to strip them of worldly concerns just as assuredly as the tall garden wall blocked out the sounds of the traffic beyond.
“You just don’t find this kind of atmosphere in Southern California,” said Andra Jones, an artist from Newport Beach who makes regular pilgrimages to the garden. “It’s like stepping out of today back into a more serene and peaceful time.”
Myrtle Devendorf, another regular, couldn’t agree more. “Coming here takes you into another space,” she said. “It’s almost like meditating.”
