The Berkeley Rose Garden is a city-owned park in the North Berkeley area of

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. The rose garden is situated in a residential area of the

Berkeley Hills The Berkeley Hills are a range of the Pacific Coast Ranges that overlook the northeast side of the valley that encompasses San Francisco Bay. They were previously called the "Contra Costa Range/Hills" (from the original Spanish ''Sierra de la C ...

between the Cragmont and the

La Loma Park La Loma Park is a tract of land located in the Berkeley Hills section of the city of Berkeley, California in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Spanish word ''loma'' means "rise/low hill". It was the property of Captain Richard Parks Thomas, a vetera ...

neighborhoods, occupying most of the block between Eunice Street and Bayview Place along the west side of Euclid Avenue, and west of Codornices Park.

Rose Garden

The Berkeley Rose Garden is in the form of a terraced amphitheater located in a small canyon and has views of the city and bay of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and the

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by th ...

. More than 100 rose varieties grow along the terraces, with maximum blooming occurring in mid-May. The park is bisected by

Codornices Creek Codornices Creek (sometimes spelled and/or pronounced "Cordonices"), long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 is one of the principal creeks which runs out o ...

. The north side of the Rose Garden includes a set of tennis courts. The south side is a grove of

coast redwood ''Sequoia sempervirens'' ()''Sunset Western Garden Book,'' 1995:606–607 is the sole living species of the genus '' Sequoia'' in the cypress family Cupressaceae (formerly treated in Taxodiaceae). Common names include coast redwood, coastal ...

bay laurel ''Laurus nobilis'' is an aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub with green, glabrous (smooth) leaves. It is in the flowering plant family Lauraceae. It is native to the Mediterranean region and is used as bay leaf for seasoning in cooking. I ...

and coastal

live oak Live oak or evergreen oak is any of a number of oaks in several different sections of the genus ''Quercus'' that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. These oaks are not more closely related to each other than they are to other oaks. ...

trees. Construction of the rose garden began in 1933 with funds provided by the federal

Civil Works Administration The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were ...

. Construction continued in subsequent years with funding from the

California State Relief Administration The California State Relief Administration (SRA), created in 1935, was the successor to the State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA), created in 1933. The agencies were responsible for distributing state and federal funds to improve conditio ...

and the federal

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

. It opened on September 26, 1937. Since its inception, the Rose Garden has been the site of a number of rose shows. File:Berkeley Rose Garden.jpg, Berkeley Rose Garden terraces File:Berkeley Rose Garden Sunset during Winter.jpg, Berkeley Rose Garden in winter (late January 2021) Image:Codornices Park Berkeley.JPG, Codornices Park

Codornices Park

Across Euclid Avenue is Codornices Park, an older city park (established 1915) of which the Rose Garden was initially considered an extension. Codornices includes a large lawn, picnic area, children's play equipment and a long concrete slide. Here, two forks of Codornices Creek have their confluence, right along the line of the

Hayward Fault The Hayward Fault Zone is a right-lateral strike-slip geologic fault zone capable of generating destructive earthquakes. This fault is about long, situated mainly along the western base of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay. It runs ...

. The clubhouse of the Codornices Club, a neighborhood improvement and social club, once stood on a lot adjacent to the top of the concrete slide. A pedestrian tunnel runs under Euclid, connecting the Rose Garden with Codornices Park. In this section, from 1912 to 1928, before the Rose Garden was established, a wooden streetcar and road trestle spanned Codornices Creek along Euclid. In late 1928 through early 1929, the trestle was filled in, a culvert laid through it for the creek, and the pedestrian tunnel constructed. Much of the fill originated from the excavation of a small hill on the UC Berkeley campus as part of the construction of Giannini Hall.Berkeley Daily Gazette, January 3, 1929
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Using the concrete slide

To use the slide it is recommended to sit on top of a piece of cardboard the size of a normal doormat. There is usually a small quantity of cardboard available to the public at the top or bottom of the slide for this purpose. Bringing your own cardboard is a good idea if it has recently rained. Intermediate and expert slide users sprinkle a couple handfuls of sand at the top of the slide before embarking for a more thrilling experience.

References

Footnotes

{{reflist

Sources

*Annual Reports of the City of Berkeley Recreation Department, 1933-1940 *Berkeley Gazette, September 27, 1933

External links

*City of Berkeley's web page about th
garden
*Article by

Gray Brechin Gray A. Brechin (born September 2, 1947) is an American geographer, architectural historian, and author. He is the founder and Project Scholar of The Living New Deal based at the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography. Brechin is a frequent and popul ...

that includes a description of th
Rose Garden

Friends of the Rose Garden
a volunteer group that helps take care of the garden. Gardens in California Berkeley Hills Parks in Berkeley, California Rose gardens in the United States

Berkeley Rose Garden The Berkeley Rose Garden is a city-owned park in the North Berkeley area of Berkeley, California. The rose garden is situated in a residential area of the Berkeley Hills between the Cragmont and the La Loma Park neighborhoods, occupying most of t ...

Tourist attractions in Berkeley, California Culture of Berkeley, California Landmarks in the San Francisco Bay Area