Sherman Gardens & Library under renovation March 2026

With the heat wave mostly over, yesterday I drove south to Newport Beach for some garden time. Bathed in the cool coastal conditions at the Pacific Ocean, the Sherman Gardens & Library are a genteel lunch and garden destination that always has something worth looking at. The succulent and cactus garden, for instance. The first clue that this was not going to be a relaxing wander through the lath houses and brick pathways was the free admission. Didn’t I used to have to pay to get in? The entrance had been changed as well. The newly improvised entrance led straight into the succulent garden.

The path out of the succulent garden led into what used to be the central planting area that opened up as you entered from the old entrance. These beds were mass-planted with ranunculus. The rest of the gardens, estimating maybe 75 percent, were under renovation, blocked with fencing. So head’s up: Call before you go. The renovations look to be extensive.

From the website I should have checked before visiting:

“Pardon Our Dust!

From March 9–27, enjoy free admission to the gardens. Please enter on Dahlia Avenue and follow the signage marked “Enter Here.”

We are laying important pipes and will close the pathway that leads to the central garden until March 21. You can still enjoy our adobe courtyard, train display, pepper tree, and succulent garden.”

from a visit in 2020, the central path between the lath houses, looking roughly toward where the construction fence is now to the right

Unless I’ve got my orientation completely wrong, this is the central area in 2020, this year planted with ranunculus

This planting in 2020 would be just beyond the construction fence

There was, however, an indoor clivia show and sale. Not growing clivia and not particularly interested in doing so, I spun around the entrance a few times before plunging through the doorway and into an unfamiliar horticultural world.

clivia are dappled shade plants for the greenhouse or zones 9-11 that require dry and cool resting periods in winter to bloom well

It’s not often I’m surrounded by plants with which I have no point of connection. But what I could connect with was the hybridizer’s zeal and enthusiasm that was evident in the varied shapes and colors of the clivia blooms. They were identified only with numbers, no names.

similar colors and flowers shapes with Vireya rhododendrons

in vases I was reminded of freesias but without the strong scent

The clivia show and sale continues on Sunday, March 22, 2026.

We were given pencil and paper to vote for our favorite, and I chose No. 7, which reminded me of Alstroemeria isabellana

After leaving the Sherman, and starved for lunch, I grabbed some sushi and headed for the Newport Beach Civic Center, where I lunched with agaves, dyckias, dragon trees and cactus.