Ruth Bancroft Garden

Ruth Bancroft Garden is a 3.5-acre public botanical garden in Walnut Creek, California, devoted to dry-climate planting and known for more than 2,000 cactus, succulents, trees, and shrubs from places including California, Mexico, Chile, South Africa, and Australia. It began in the early 1950s as Ruth Bancroft’s private collection on Bancroft Farm, a former orchard established on land bought by publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft in the 1880s. After the orchard was removed in 1972, the collection moved to its present site. Preserved in 1989 as the first U.S. garden protected by The Garden Conservancy, it opened to the public in 1992 and became an influential example of water-wise garden design.

Walnut Creek, California · United States