The Berkeley Rose Garden fills most of the block on the west side of Euclid Avenue between Eunice Street and Bayview Place in the North Berkeley hills. Codornices Creek runs through it. Its stone terraces form an amphitheater that faces San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate. Wikipedia says more than 100 rose varieties grow there, and they bloom most in mid-May.
A Depression-era project
Building began in 1933 with money from the federal Civil Works Administration, followed by state relief and Works Progress Administration funds. The garden was dedicated in September 1937. Susan Cerny writes for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association that Vernon M. Dean designed it and that a semicircular redwood pergola spans the width of the amphitheater. She adds that the East Bay Counties Rose Society planned the first 2,500 bushes and planted one color per terrace, from red at the top to white at the bottom.
Cerny writes that the canyon was named El Valle de los Codornices, the Valley of the Quails, in the 1840s. From 1912 to 1928, a 275-foot wooden streetcar trestle carried Euclid across the creek. Wikipedia says it was filled in during 1928 and 1929, partly with dirt dug up for Giannini Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.
Codornices Park and the slide
A pedestrian tunnel under Euclid connects the garden to Codornices Park, which dates to 1915. The park has a lawn, picnic area and a concrete slide about 40 feet long. Visitors often ride it on pieces of cardboard. On the north side of the Rose Garden are tennis courts, and on the south side is a grove of redwoods, bay laurels and oaks.
For Oakland’s rose garden, see our Morcom Rose Garden guide.