"When I tell you something is dangerous, I mean it. And, I never forget the Victims"
T.J. Hooker
"Everyone can master a Grief but he who has it”
William Shakespeare
”I had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth”
Kurt Vonnegut about his character, Kilgore Trout.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

The Monestary Stones Garden (Library Terrace Garden) in San Francisco

Oh my!  I misspelled San Francisco!  Midnight postings a re the very Devil to spell check. lol

This is a beautiful space, created from the worn stones of a ruined Cirstercian Monastery in Spain.  This would probably never have happened if present day antiquities laws had been in force at that time of William Randolph Hearst's "conquests".  However, it was eventually a beautiful and quite good use of the stones in a sort of contemplative garden called The Library Terrace Garden, in part.  Enjoy the stroll.


Round bed at the entrance to Th Botanical Gardens in San Francisco.


Fountain built in the courtyard near the entrance
Another View, out the front gate to the Gardens.


Accent stones with small trailing vines growing 'round them


Blocks themselves in a wall


The Story of how the Garden came to be.


More Accents from plinths and parts of columns.


A look down the longer axis of the garden.
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3 comments:

  1. The Rockefeller's bought up bits and pieces of old abandon church buildings from all over europe, and built "the Cloisters" (part of Met-).

    A wing here, a chapel there... a little bit of 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centrury europe--set down in NY. (they also bought up the land across the way on the NJ side of the Hudson(aka North River) so that the vista's wouldn't change (and its very easy (if you block out the noise from the unseen highway) to imagine you are in the 12th (or 13th,...) century--in some cloister in Italy when you sit in the garden, with the espaliared trees, and fountains.

    The peoples of europe were happy to sell all this..(and thought they were the winners getting money for these old wrecks.) Hearst & Rockefeller had the right idea.. and our cities are the richer for it!

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  2. Beautiful old traveling stones...of course, I did have a thought...have they been happy to bloom where planted or forever have the quest of what they came from?

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  3. Hi here Helen, thanks for your comment, and a little history, of the Met gardens. Wow!

    The Rockefellers were much more civic minded than Hearst, which is wonderful. Hearst meant to rebuild it on one of his own properties. Some day I hope to see that beautiful place you describe. It sounds peaceful and meditative. Most of the monastery stones were eventually made into a contemplative Garden space, but some were used for walls in other parts of the Botanical gardens spaces.

    PJ. Very interesting question. Stones, those little bits of massifs, are thought, by some, to have a "homing device". Maybe that's why we pick up stones from places and keep them? I've always wondered about whether they were alive and just had a very slow life - whether they could actually "cry out" in praise, to Heaven. Interesting. I wonder about trees, too. May be it's those Druids in us you think? The Ancients knew things.

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I’m going through some stuff but I will peek in now and then and will be back when it’s over..