Filoli Center

The Filoli Center offers various tours around the garden. There are guided tours as well as self-guided tours, nature hikes, and various tours for orchard and cutting.

Besides the tours there is the garden shop where you'll find gardening supplies, books, and other home items.

But don't forget the Cafe! It's a great place to take a break before or after a tour. There are also seasonal tea reservations at the cafe that sell out fast!

The extensive sixteen-acre formal garden was planned and planted as construction of the house neared completion. The lawns and shrubs around the house were planted by the fall of 1917. The woodlands and the undeveloped Crystal Springs Watershed lands surrounding the estate provide a magnificent backdrop for the formal garden. The garden survives today as one of America’s finest historic gardens.

The Bourn family asked Bruce Porter, known for his interiors, murals, stained glass windows, and garden designs, for help in making design decisions involving the layout of the site, the garden, and the outdoor structures. Porter shared Mr. Bourn’s appreciation of the natural California landscape and designed the formal garden to enhance the natural beauty of the landscape.

Porter and the Bourns envisioned the house and garden as complementary units, with the north-south axis of the garden echoing the line of the Transverse Hall. Inspired by European influences, the garden is a succession of garden rooms, containing parterres, terraces, lawns, and pools, arranged between the two parallel north-south walks. The southern most point, the High Place, affords views of the garden, house, and fields. As you walk through the garden, notice the fantastic detail work with art imitating nature and nature imitating art, which epitomizes the essence of a pleasure garden.

Isabella Worn supervised the planting of the Filoli garden. When Filoli was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. William P. Roth in 1937, they retained Worn to continue her work. Under Mrs. Roth’s patronage, Worn enriched the garden with a variety of plants, including hundreds of Camellias, Rhododendrons, Roses, and many Magnolias. Her ingenious designs and great sense of color were hallmarks of the garden that Mrs. Roth continued to follow even after Worn’s death.

As the garden gained worldwide renown, Mrs. Roth was awarded several honors, including the Distinguished Service Medal of the Garden Club of America for her achievements as a collector and propagator of plants. The formal garden at Filoli is named the Lurline B. Roth Garden in her honor.

Today the garden is maintained by fourteen full-time horticulturists, student interns, and over one hundred garden volunteers.

he Friends of Filoli Board will be led by its new President, Ms. Toni Barrack.
A San Francisco native, who now lives in Redwood City, Ms. Toni Barrack graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a B.S. in Business Administration. She was a manager for many years in the areas of Finance, Marketing and Planning for local corporations. After retiring, Ms. Barrack became a Filoli volunteer in 1999 with Nature Education, leading hikes for school children, mentoring new Nature Education docents and serving in a number of positions with the Nature Education Advisory Board. She also served as Chair of Nature Education for the 2006-2007 seasons.
Ms. Barrack looks forward to providing visitors to Filoli with the best experience possible and to working closely with its outstanding volunteers to further this goal. Toni Barrack is also currently a volunteer mediator and facilitator with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center and enjoys travel, hiking, learning Spanish, and of course, spending time at Filoli.
Filoli is the only National Trust for Historic Preservation site in the San Francisco Bay Area and a nonprofit organization with approximately 10,000 members, including almost 1,200 volunteers. The Friends of Filoli is the volunteer organization developed to further the goals of Filoli through the training of docents for the House and Garden tours, and for the Nature Education docents, fundraising events, education programs, helping to operate Filoli’s Garden Shop and Café and other assistance that supports Filoli’s mission statement.