Flower time at Filoli

After almost seven years of living in San Francisco, we still hadn’t visited Filoli. So when a free, sunny weekend popped up this spring, we decided it was time!

Filoli is an old country estate with a beautiful mansion and gardens, located about a half hour drive south of San Francisco. It was built by William Bowers Bourn II, who also owned Empire Mine in Grass Valley. Visiting Filoli was like being transported to a completely different time and place. We spent almost three hours exploring the garden and the house and felt like we weren’t even in the Bay Area. There was a magnificent swimming pool with running water, surrounded by a lush lawn that felt like a private oasis. One of the volunteers was sitting at a table near the pool, reading the newspaper in the sun, and it really struck me as the perfect morning setting.

There were so many types of flowers blooming throughout the gardens — the roses and ranunculus were particularly bountiful. We could see that we had missed the prime of the peonies by just a week or two, which made us think of how fun it would be to come back at different times of the years to see the changing faces of the garden.

Here are a few photos from our visit!