By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
There are, around the West, a sprinkling of wonderful horticultural libraries that can take you places you never dreamed of going. Last week, for example, I took my friend Rich Quarles (that's him at right) to the library at Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA. It's the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon reading works old and new. Rich was fascinated with a book that described a sundial that set off a cannon at the same time every day so plantation workers would know when to break (it was done with a magnifying glass). I was more drawn to W. J. Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, which is authoritative and opinionated in a way that only Michael Dirr approaches in Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants.
Here are some western botanical garden libraries that I love. Many have admission fees: check the online links.
Bloedel Reserve is on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Their library is open 1 to 4 Mondays, and 10 to 4 every other day. It is located in a room in a chateau-style building that looks north across Puget Sound. The library is intimate, with just under 1400 books, but all are cataloged online at LibraryThing. Surrounding forest and gardens cover 150 acres.
The Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at San Francisco Botanical Garden has 27,000 volumes and 450 periodicals, plus a 1600-volume children's horticultural library. It's open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 to 4. San Francisco Botanical Garden (formerly Strybing Arboretum) has 50,000 plants on 55 acres.
The Helen Fowler Library at Denver Botanic Gardens is another gem, with huge numbers of books, antique nursery catalogs, and digital resources. Members of Denver Botanic Gardens can check out books. Hours are Saturday through Thursday, 10–5.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, has to be mentioned because the gardens are splendid and the library gargantuan. But alas, the library is open only to serious researchers; if you're working on your PhD, you're in.
The Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden's library houses 30,000 books, with about 18,000 in open stacks. Most are listed in their online catalog. Their strong suit is in plants of Mediterranean and subtropical gardening. The arboretum itself covers 127 acres. Library hours are listed on their web page.
The Schilling Library at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has 7500 books focused on desert plants, plus periodicals and an online browser. Open weekdays, noon to 4.
Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona del Mar, CA, is another small one (the gardens cover just 2.2 acres), but it has 25,000 books and hundreds of thousands of papers and documents. The focus here is on Southwest History, and while this library is also set up for researchers, they cast a broad net with that term: a kid writing a paper for elementary school qualifies. Open Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday, 9 to 4:30.
The Elisabeth C. Miller Library, at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horiculture in Seattle, is open to the public and lends books. Surrounded by its own very interesting gardens that are part of the broader University of Washington Botanic Gardens, this library has 15,000 garden-related books and hundreds of periodicals. Hours are posted online.
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