A Place to Stop, Smell the Roses
The bright splash of yellow marigolds and blue lobelia is almost blinding. Those aren’t antlers coming out of the wall, but rather an Australian moosehorn fern. And over there, baskets of pink, purple and red fuchsias hang above the impatiens.
The Sherman Library & Gardens provides a singular refuge from the congested traffic, cranky motorists and glaring asphalt of Pacific Coast Highway just outside its gates.
Located on 2.2 acres in Corona del Mar -- an entire block of expensive real estate in an area otherwise filled with restaurants and small businesses -- the gardens are home to 2,000 species of plants.
While 40,000 people a year visit, “It’s still amazing how many people who live around here don’t know about it,” said John Bishop, manager of horticulture.
The rose garden sits on one side of the property, with the cactus collection on the other. In between, in the “shade house” are the begonias. There is a sago palm from southern Japan, which isn’t a palm at all. The perennial section has salvias, with their delicate red-and-white trumpet-shaped flowers, and nemesia from South Africa, showing off their purple and yellow blooms.
In the tropical conservatory, which is maintained at 62 to 85 degrees and 80% humidity, moth orchids thrive, their flowers resembling moths right down to the heads. The star of the conservatory may be the red pitcher plants, which consume insects that unwittingly crawl into their flowers.
The gardens dominate the property, which includes a small research library specializing in the development of the Southwest.
Sherman Library & Gardens is named for one of Southern California’s pioneering developers, Moses Hazeltine Sherman.
Before coming to California, Sherman was one of the founders of Phoenix’s transportation system and the city’s first superintendent of public education. He moved to Southern California in 1890 and helped start what became the Red Car electric rail system that once gave the region one of the best public transportation systems in the country.
One of his real estate syndicates built the Hollywoodland subdivision marked today by the iconic Hollywood sign. Another of his investment groups developed 47,000 acres in the San Fernando Valley, and Sherman left his name on Sherman Oaks, Sherman Way and Hazeltine Avenue.
In 1932, the 78-year-old Sherman died in Newport Beach, and Arnold Haskell became president of the Sherman Co., a holding company for the land investments.
In the 1950s, Sherman’s two daughters and Haskell established a foundation to honor Sherman, and it would provide much of the funding for the gardens and library. About the same time, Haskell moved to Corona del Mar, close to his racing yacht, and commuted to the Sherman Co. office in Brentwood. He traveled past a small adobe house built in the 1930s on Pacific Coast Highway and thought it would be a nice spot for an office.
The family who owned the adobe and the next-door Norman’s Nursery refused to sell. But when Haskell learned that the family wanted to travel, “He pulled up on Coast Highway with an Airstream trailer,” said Wade Roberts, director of the gardens. Haskell threw in the trailer as part of the sale, and the deal was made.
In 1965, USC history professor William O. Hendricks asked Haskell if he could tap Sherman’s papers for research.
A few weeks later, Haskell hired Hendricks to manage Sherman’s collection of maps, photographs, microfilm and other documents detailing development of the Southwest. Hendricks is still the director.
Roberts was hired in 1966 to oversee the gardens, which the foundation expanded. It also began acquiring neighboring apartment houses, shops and office buildings, one of which housed the Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce.
A woman’s organization that evolved into the Junior League of Orange County began serving soup and sandwiches in the garden, and an art gallery was opened. Today, lunch is served during the week, and Sunday brunch is served in spring, summer and fall in Cafe Jardin. It is operated by Pascal Olhats, owner of the renowned Newport Beach restaurant Pascal.
The garden offers tours, and classes ranging from floral design to shade gardening.
In addition to walk-in visitors, Sherman hosts 35 weddings and parties and other special events each year -- but turns down requests for more. “The focus is to maintain the ambience of the gardens,” Roberts said.
Besides, private parties can prove disruptive -- like during a wedding when a young boy was caught in the tropical conservatory dipping a fishing pole into the koi pond.
Good thing he wasn’t much of a fisherman.
