The Secret Garden

When I was but a young buck and a freshman in High School, our family decided to have a Palo Alto Thanksgiving with some extended family.

My first Cross Country season had just barely ended. My sister E has always been a runner herself, so we planned weeks ahead of time to go on a Palo Alto run together. The first night we all arrived in Palo Alto, E and I pulled on our running gear and headed out the door.

Running in Palo Alto is unlike running anywhere else. Most of the year, the air is lush, cool, and smells like eucalyptus. The streets are narrow and tree lined. E and I took haphazard turns down beautiful streets at our own whimsy. Randomly we happened upon a beautiful garden that was open to the public. It was made up of plotted squares with lanes of gravel that ran between them. The garden boasted exotic flowers, bushes, trees, vines, and an enormous vegetable patch. There were bird baths and benches and an enormous white gazebo in the center. That has remained a very fond memory to me—winding through a random garden with my sister at dusk in Palo Alto.

When I moved back ten years later, husband in tow, that garden was in the back of my mind. I didn’t make any efforts to find it though. I think I didn’t want to go looking for it, I honestly hoped I would just hear about it or magically find it. As if I live in a Disney movie or something. Very realistic.

When we first moved here one of the very first things I did was plot a run on Google Maps that would take me from our apartment to the house where my mother was raised (in the older part of Palo Alto). It’s a stunning house with white wood siding and navy shutters with waning moons carved in them and a brick walkway. Every so often I run to the house and back (if I’m feeling ambitious—round trip it’s about 7 miles) and stand outside it. Correction: I stand outside it across the street so I don’t look like I’m a stalker. And then I let the waves of nostalgia wash over me and wish my grandparents were still alive and still lived there. And then I decide that if I ever become a billionaire I’m buying it (from the billionaire who lives there now).

A few weeks ago I was running to the house on a cool, overcast Saturday morning. I was just minding my own beeswax and drinking in the smell of freshly cut lawn when I peaked down a random road perpendicular to the street I was running on. And all of a sudden… there it was.

I found the garden.







I felt like Mary Lennox in that part of “The Secret Garden” when she realizes the key in fact fits in the lock, and the robin led her to the right door.

I immediately called E (got voicemail—and no, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t screen my calls but she is a busy mother of 3.99 children) and left her a wheezy and breathless voicemail that sounded like:

“OhmygoshIfoundthatgardenthatwewentrunningthroughinNovember1999andit’sexactlylikeitwasthendoyourememeberwhatI’mtalkingabout??”

It was completely quiet and deserted, and I wandered through it, snapping pictures with my phone, wandering down every lane, and drinking in the smell. It's the Elizabeth Gamble Garden (I decided I should probably find out the name...) on Waverly and Churchill.

It’s now one of my favorite spots in Palo Alto. I plan on bringing a book here one Saturday and just hanging out on a bench with the squirrels. And I guess Harry can come too.