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Friday Slide Show: The Shakespeare Garden
5 April 2024
After entering Golden Gate Park from the Ninth Ave. entrance (which is getting a monumental facelift with some enormous boulders), you see the botanical garden on the left and the ball fields on the right before you come to the music concourse where the de Young and Academy of Sciences buildings are.
But you won't see the Shakespeare Garden even though that's the closest attraction you pass on the road.
It's scratch out of the little strip between the Academy of Sciences and the street. There is a sign marking the path in but it's easily ignored as you try to find parking or avoid a cyclist as you cross the road.
But if you find it, you will have found a lovely oasis.
So lovely that it's the most popular site in the park for a wedding (although as a public park it must remain open to the public). Wedding parties can only put up an easel or a burly relative to discourage visitors during the ceremony.
We found a little description of the Garden:
While the garden and area is commonly known as "Shakespeare's Garden," the California Spring Blossom and Wildflower Association originally established it as the Garden of Shakespeare's Flowers. With a history dating back to 1928, the garden was designed to be a place where all of the flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare could grow. That name can still be seen in the garden itself.
There are, in fact, daffodils, violets, daisies, poppies, roses and lilies among the 200 plants Shakespeare mentioned.
A brick wall, a sundial under a canopy of cherry trees and a variety of benches also furnish the garden. The wall with its bronze plaques of quotations houses the bust of William Shakespeare. It's a copy of the cast made in 1814 by George Bullock from the stone bust of Shakespeare that was created shortly after the his death.
We like to drop in for a moment when we pass by. It's quiet and peaceful. We sit on a bench and drink in the sunshine like the plants around us.
This time we read about the daffodils that, like the cherry trees, were in bloom. From A Winter's Tale:
Daffodils
that come before the swallows dare, and take
the winds of March with beauty.As we ourselves take the winds of March with the beauty in the garden. Soon enough we'll return to the asphalt and the street lights and the shop windows and bus routes that lace a city up.
But for a moment we can indulge in what ties us all together.
