Stanford's Hidden Arizona Garden: A Victorian Cactus Garden Next to the Stanford Family Tomb

Most Stanford visitors stick to the Main Quad. Fewer find the Arizona Garden, south of the Stanford Mausoleum off Quarry Road, between Campus Drive and Arboretum Road.

A garden for a house never built

Stanford's Facilities Operations says landscape architect Rudolph Ulrich designed the garden for Jane and Leland Stanford in the early 1880s. A 2003 Stanford Report article says it was planted as part of the landscaping for a planned country house. That house was dropped after the Stanfords' only child, Leland Jr., died in 1884, but the garden stayed and became part of the campus. According to Stanford Report, Leland Stanford sent Ulrich to the Sonoran Desert to collect plants, which were shipped back by rail.

Decline and revival

Stanford Report says the garden was regularly maintained until the 1920s, then largely neglected after its last gardeners retired in 1926. By 1997 it was 'more ruin than garden.' Restoration began in the late 1990s as a project between the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society and Stanford's Facilities Operations. Volunteers rebuilt the rock borders of the garden's 58 beds, which follow the original symmetrical layout, including beds shaped like moons and stars. Facilities Operations says volunteers still meet monthly to work in the garden.

Facilities Operations also says the garden was a meeting place for courting students in the university's early years. Stanford Report says the garden is roughly divided into an Eastern Hemisphere section, with aloes, jade plants and other Old World succulents, and a Western Hemisphere section of cacti from the Americas.

The mausoleum

Nearby, the Stanford Mausoleum holds Leland, Jane and Leland Jr. Wikipedia says it was completed in 1889, using granite from Barre, Vermont, and white Carrara marble. It has sphinxes in front and back, and the mausoleum is opened to the public once a year during Founders' Day activities. Close by is the Angel of Grief, a memorial to Jane Stanford's brother.

Facilities Operations points visitors to Stanford Transportation's visitor parking page. Pair the walk with a visit to the Cantor Arts Center.