Featured Plant

A 30-foot hill of ivy in the San Francisco Botanical Garden sat undisturbed for at least 25 years. Named Heidelberg Hill for the 1894 Midwinter Fair, where it was the site of a German village and beer garden, this area has been transformed into a stunning  Mediterranean garden.

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In 2008, Jason Martinez, one of San Francisco Botanical Garden's gardeners, studied this valuable and unused space. On his own initiative, he proposed a design for a Mediterranean Garden that would change the hill and its base into one reflective of a rocky and sunlit terrain found along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It took time to accomplish as his design had to be approved, funds acquired and the century-old expanse of ivy had to be removed. The power of a City backhoe was essential in plowing up the entrenched mass of roots. In early 2012, mounds of rich soil from Golden Gate Park Nursery and huge boulders appeared at the foot of the still barren hillside. It became a roped-off area and a mystery to visitors. By December, the sandy hill was covered with black soil, and dozens of natives of the Mediterranean plant community, Maquis. Nestled among the boulders, an evergreen vegetative plant community similar to California's chaparral began to emerge. A border of blue atlas fescue (Festuca mairei) and scarlet poppies, Papaver rhoeas, leads the eye upwards past glorious clumps of snapdragons (Antirrhinum hispanicum), Echium spp., rosemary (Rosmarinus spp.), lavender (Lavandula spp.), yarrow (Achillea tomentosa), salvias (Salvia spp.) and rockroses (Cistus spp.) to the summit of the hill.