While exchanging messages with Jim Bishop (working out the details for my visit to his garden during our trip to San Diego), he shared photos on Facebook of a garden near the beach in Encinitas that was open for people to explore. He narrowed down the location (Moonlight State Beach) and I put it on my itinerary for the day I visited Bird Rock Tropicals (which I still haven’t written about!). When bookmarking the spot I discovered Dave’s Rock Garden just up the street…
How can you not love a garden with the tag line “Bringing Unity to our Community“?
Agave shawii
From the website: “My name is Dave Dean and In 2015, I started picking up trash and pulling up weeds on an old abandoned lot owned by the State. After the weeds were cleared, I began planting drought tolerant succulents to prevent the run-off of soil. Next, I created pathways with rocks that I gathered from the beach. One day, a lady left a painted black and white heart medallion rock at the end of the garden pathway and the magic began. I thought instead of one black and white rock, one day I will have a thousand rocks, painted by a thousand people, in a thousand colors. So I began to provide paint and brushes and invited visitors to paint a rock. Today, we have over 7,000 painted rocks, from over 115 countries and from the ages of 1 to 103.” (source)
That’s a lot of rocks!
The plants are pretty fabulous as well.
Velma, missing her glasses. I wonder if she can see the rocks?
Gorgeous kalanchoe flowers…
That’s Moonlight State Beach in the distance.
What a fun garden to walk through!
Then we were off to the private garden Jim had photographed. It was closer to the beach and much more densely planted.
I ended up just circling the perimeter, looking for a way in.
Turning back to go up the other side.
Yes I wanted to walk up the driveway, but I did not.
Soft and chalky + spiky.
They had one of the best trash/recycling corrals I’ve ever seen…
Final view of the garden compound from the beach.
We parked by this nice minimalistic garden design.
The angle I took these photos from makes it look like the garden belongs to the black home, but no. This is the front garden of black house.
The columnar and barrel cactus, Yucca rostrata playground…
Belonged to the white tile (brick?) home.
Here’s their living fence on the other side.
