Arizona Cactus Garden - A House That Never Was

Photo: BrokenSphere, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Stanford University Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Spiky, sculptural and a little unexpected, this garden is older than the university. Landscape designer Rudolph Ulrich laid it out for Leland and Jane Stanford between 1880 and 1883 to frame a grand new home planned for this spot. Rare cacti for it were gathered in the Sonoran Desert and shipped west.

The house was never built. After Leland Jr. died in 1884, the Stanfords turned their plans toward the university instead. The garden carried on without its mansion, but after its gardeners retired in 1925 it slowly went wild and lost many of its plants.

Volunteers began restoring it in the late 1990s, and today about 500 cacti and succulents grow in 58 beds, split between plants of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Look for golden barrel cactus, century plants and yuccas along the paths.

A short walk east, the Stanford family mausoleum holds Leland, Jane and Leland Jr. Students have held a Halloween party near it since the 1970s, a campus tradition that still draws hundreds.

Getting here: Head north from the museum about 350 meters into the arboretum; the garden lies just west of the Stanford family mausoleum.

Did you know?: The marble Angel of Grief near the mausoleum, a memorial to Jane Stanford's brother Henry Lathrop, is a 1908 replacement; the 1906 earthquake destroyed the first one.

Photo op: Crouch low between the beds and frame a big barrel cactus or agave against the trees beyond.

More on Wikipedia: Arizona Cactus Garden · Stanford Mausoleum · Jane Stanford

Arizona Cactus Garden - A House That Never Was

Stops on this tour