I haven’t finished unpacking from my trip to California this week, but it’s my day to post so here’s a quick look at the eye-popping garden at Sunnylands. The estate of Walter (former ambassador to the U.K.) and Leonore Annenberg, it served as a very upscale Western Camp David where presidents and royalty met for decades, and where conferences are regularly held even today. Originally 700 acres, it’s now just (haha) 200 acres – 7 miles outside of Palm Springs. Since the Annenbergs’ deaths it’s been run by a foundation and opened to us tourists.
The residence itself is about 25,000 (!) square feet of Modernist extravagance – in the very best taste.
I was thrilled to snag a ticket for the interior tour – $55 and worth it. Interior design, celebrity and history-making in one mind-blowing place. My favorites were the guest rooms, with the names of the celebrities, royalty and presidents who’ve stayed there on display. I kept thinking, “Imagine!” Some interior photos here.
Sorry to report, this is all I can show you of the amazing interior – a $40 coffee table book.
The Gardens
Thankfully we were allowed to photograph the gardens, which are described in Great Gardens of the World:
Opened in 2012, years after the couple died, the nine-acre desert garden sits in the northwest corner of California’s Sonora Desert….Sunnylands gardens are pointedly quite different from the estate’s park-like landscape, which includes eleven lakes and a private, nine-hole golf course. The gardens are composed of more than 70 native and arid-adapted plants from North and South America, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Designed by OJB Landscape Architecture, with horticultural consultant Mary Irish, they demonstrate the sustainability a lush, multi-colored garden in a desert environment. Here, mesquite, palo verde, and palo brea trees offer shaded avenues of tranquility along the gardens’ walking trails and reflecting pools. A grassy circle is traditionally a communal gathering spot for activities such as yoga and tai chi, or games for children.
Nothing like we ever see in the East.
The Sunnylands labyrinth is a “lithocrete walking surface lined with low-growing wedelia and surrounded by mesquite trees and leucophyllum that bloom violet in the spring.” My college friend Joe Blitman is seen here walking the walk. (I’ll show you his and his husband’s stunning home in another post.) 
A much more traditional part of the gardens includes water features with views of the golf course and even better, mountains in the distance.
I’ll leave you with another view of the snow-capped San Jacinto Mountains, this time over a sea of California poppies. Blooming like crazy in late January!
I visit these gardens in 2022. Beautiful indeed. Didn’t get to tour the home unfortunately but will the next visit to San Diego and son. Thanks for the memories.
Makes me miss the West. North Carolina is home now (and was my mother’s home before me) but I grew up in California, and your post reminded me of the desert, one of the defining landscapes in that enormously varied state. My favorite photo is of that sweep of California poppies (/Eschscholzia californica/) with the San Jacinto mountains beyond. Renee’s Seed has both the classic orange annual plus different hued variations (plant breeders, they never rest) with variety names like “Tequila Sunrise.” Isn’t Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage? Pretty apt name, given that the lakes and golf courses rely on Colorado River water, which isn’t, sadly, an infinite resource. I know Annenburg for his impacts on journalism (didn’t he start TV Guide?), and friendship with the Queen after Nixon named him Ambassador to the UK. That’s quite a garden, for sure! Everyone who has space for a labyrinth should do one (though I kind-of wish they had used those barrel cactuses to define it instead of weiglia – that certainly might encourage mindfulness.)
Anyway, your post also reminds me of date palms, just 15 mile away in Indio. They may not be natives, but they are well adapted and pretty yummy. Ages ago, when Nixon was still Eisenhower’s VP and my family up and migrated west from Chicago in our old Ford station wagon, with an moaning evaporative cooler mounted like a turbojet nacell in the passenger side window, we simply roasted driving through in the Coacella Valley. My brother and I, two wilted little tikes, were dying in the back seat. Date shakes in Indio were the coolest and most delicious drinks we’d ever tasted. I’ve never forgotten it. Another example of successful non-native plant selection, I suppose.
Thanks for a sunny post to brighten a cold (many places) January.
So nice to hear from you, Don! And yes, I can imagine missing a landscape so different from ours in the East, and so beautiful.
Just wonderful, Susan, very thorough in your reportage and magnificent photos as well. Not only as Western gardeners but as Opera fans, we are grateful to the Annenberg Foundation for their gracious generosity to the Metropolitan Opera.
And to various schools of Journalism and Mass Comm as well. Great column.
FYI, temps are heading to 58-59° here today, full sun, no clouds in sight, minimal humidity. Ah, life in the West!
California poppies? with so many petals? I don’t think so. Maybe someone else can identify them.