After the wet hush of winter, spring erupts at Western Hills Garden like an explosion of skyrockets. Purple and white Spanish bluebells peel out amid the woodlands, joined by baby blue forget-me-nots and white onion flowers. Rhododendrons and magnolias flaunt their lush blooms, while downy catkins, the seed-filled flower cluster of mature trees, drape from branches. Even the weeds seem to be showing off, says Hadley Dynak, who purchased the 3-acre historic garden in the redwood forest near Occidental with her husband, Kent Strader, in 2022.
It’s an exciting time of anticipation and potential, marked not just by the awakening plants and the lengthening days, but by the sudden activity of birds and bees as temperatures shift from brisk to comfortably cool. “Spring is like a loud shout — everything is alive and breathtaking,” says Dynak.
Western Hills was founded 60 years ago by Marshall Olbrich and Lester Hawkins, obsessive plant collectors with a commitment to a form of naturalistic, sustainable garden sensitive to California’s warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Together, they created a nursery that drew horticulturists and plant collectors from around the world to this tucked-away neighborhood of west county. The pair offered unusual specimens for sale, including many at the time seen nowhere else in the commercial nursery trade. Plant enthusiasts visited to swap seeds and talk ecology and world affairs with kindred spirits in what some describe as an informal outdoor salon of ideas.
Marshall and Lester — the garden’s fans refer to them in the familiar, like old friends — had a gentle way with plants, one which respected the tendency of plants and trees to grow half-wild and abundant. The garden fits into no neat design style or theme, beyond being a collector’s paradise of plants adapted to a Mediterranean climate, including primeval ferns and trees prized for their remarkable maturity, from an 84-foot-tall Japanese zelkova to a multi-stemmed Persian ironwood. Some 35 bridges meander past the five ponds, crossing back and forth over stone runnels channeling bubbling streams of water. A large folly just inside the entrance was inspired by the great English garden designer Penelope Hobhouse.
New stewards
Dynak and Strader often dreamed of someday owning a place where they could bring together different communities in partnership, though the concept of a botanical garden never crossed their minds. Dynak is a creative producer who previously worked in the arts in Berkeley and Park City, Utah, while Strader is an attorney. With grown children, the couple faced a crossroads in 2023 after putting their home up for sale. When a friend called to suggest they check out a property in rural Sonoma, they were intrigued.
“We got up here, and we were blown away by the beauty,” Strader says. “I think within 10 minutes of seeing it, I turned to Hadley and said, ‘We’re buying this place.’”
Right away, they dug in, literally, building upon decades of work not only by the garden’s founders, but by previous owners and volunteers. Strader has fixed hundreds of feet of fencing and repaired many of the garden’s bridges. Last summer, he was cutting back a tangled thicket of undergrowth, and unearthed a whole “new” path and viewing bench concealed in the branches — a moment of surprise that speaks to the dense wonders found here.
“We struggled a little early on,” says Strader. “Are we trying to recreate what was here? We went back and forth a lot and ended up with the idea that Lester and Marshall never would have sat on what they had and kept it the same. It would always have been evolving. We’re trying to honor the history while keeping it progressing forward.”
Strader and Dynak have weeded beds, composted leaves, and pruned hundreds of shrubs and trees with the help of a dozen volunteers and a new manager of horticulture, Justin Berthiaume, a former landscape architect with the National Park Service. And thanks to the efforts of intern Kat Gritt, who is studying arboriculture at Merritt College, the team has inventoried 832 different trees representing some 300 species, including a white eucalyptus that at 121 feet, is the tallest of its kind in the country.
In the past year, they’ve hosted school groups, book talks, forest-bathing sessions, journaling workshops and celebrations to mark the change of the seasons, focusing not just on horticulture but the arts. A class in “bioeuphoria” by Berkeley artist Jessica Abbott Williams had participants using handmade plant inks and natural objects to mark tiny, specific spots within the garden that captured their fascination, down to the level of a single flower or branch.
Weekend visitors check in at a small kiosk and are asked how they’d like to see the garden: by taking in broad sweeps of the landscape or looking up close. They’re offered magnifying glasses to take in new perspectives, such as the tiny marvel of the texture of a leaf or an insect collecting pollen.
“It’s like a superorganism, with all these different individuals and species working together,” says Barthiaume, who appreciates how plants from Asia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South America and the Middle East can all flourish cooperatively among the redwoods.
It’s a perfect metaphor for what Dynak and Strader are trying to create: a place where many different groups can connect and where all are invited to wander, wonder and discover.
