Better known for its notorious past, Alcatraz Island also has a garden with a significant history. (Roy Eisenhardt)

Alcatraz, also known as "The Rock" or "Devil's Island," is a craggy land mass in the middle of San Francisco Bay with an infamous past. At one time, the likes of Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Doc Barker, and the Birdman of Alcatraz, Robert Stroud, called this rock home.

Originally used by Native Americans for offshore fishing, the island housed a military stockade from 1859 to 1933 and a maximum-security federal penitentiary until 1963. Finally, in 1972, the island came under the protective arm of the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Although Alcatraz' forbidding history is etched on its rocks, the island also holds clues to another past, one that often played second fiddle to its more infamous days: Alcatraz's garden history.

"People tend to focus on the cell house and the old military structures, but the landscape is a part of the story, part of the history of the island," says Diane Ochi, project manager and landscape architect for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which, along with two other groups, helped rehabilitate the gardens last summer.

Between 1963, when the penitentiary closed, and 2003, when the restoration project began, the island vegetation went without water or maintenance.

But no longer. The island's flora and fauna are being reclaimed in a joint project by the Garden Conservancy, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the National Park Service, thanks to the helping hands of their horticulturalists, landscape architects, and team of loyal volunteers.

A volunteer works the gardens. (Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy)

"There's great value in studying what has survived here, in this inhospitable climate. It can teach today's gardeners about creating gardens independent of constant watering and fertilizing cycles," says Carola Ashford, project manager for the San Francisco-based Garden Conservancy. She adds learning the principles of sustainable gardening is the same challenge faced by earlier generations of gardeners who struggled to make plants grow on the island's dry, steep cliff faces.

During the 19th century, soldiers first planted irises, rambling roses, fuchsia, agaves, eucalyptus, and Monterey cypress trees.

"These are some of the surviving plants brought in by the Army and the officer's wives," says Deborah Lindsay, horticulturist and consultant to the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy. "As soon as people began living here, they began to garden. This was a harsh place, and the gardens made it more livable for all."

As part of the rehabilitation of the gardens, visitors won't find any annuals, once meticulously planted by prisoners. Ochi says. "We know we won't achieve that manicured look again, but we want enough of a sense of the gardens so the visitors get an appreciation about the original gardens and the people who tended the landscape."

Burned-out warden's house (Roy Eisenhardt)

Digging on Alcatraz can bring surprises. While weeding the gardens, volunteers sometimes find former inmate's handballs that were used in the outdoor recreation yard. Another unexpected discovery: the remnants of inmate gardener Elliott Michener’s birdbath, constructed out of concrete and pine in the 1940s. A principal figure in the development of many terraced gardens on the west side of the island, Michener had placed the birdbath so that prisoners could view it as they descended the stairs to work in the laundry building.

With such a sizeable venture, the garden rehabilitation is being completed in measured steps. The gardens that border the main road from the dock up the hill to the cell house are completed and blooming with bougainvillea, clivia, and chrysanthemums.

The treatment plan for Officers’ Row is in the works now, and volunteers plan to plant this fall. One of the small hothouses is scheduled to be rebuilt, and the historic paths that had been completely covered with overgrowth will get a new covering of gravel. On the drawing board by 2008: the final treatment plans for the west side prisoners’ gardens and the former rose garden.

"We have years of work ahead of us and see chapters unfolding ahead of us in this project," says Brian O'Neill, superintendent of Golden Gate National Park.

This summer, visitors to the island expecting a ferry ride and prison tour will get much more: a first-hand look at the flourishing gardens' transformation. "The history of Alcatraz is much more complex than the Hollywood version," Lindsay says. "The gardening part of the story hasn't been fully told. We hope our project will help to fill in the blanks."   

Note: In 2005, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded a $3,000 preservation services fund grant to the Garden Conservancy to help pay for an Alcatraz Island cultural
landscape inventory, a necessary step in planning for the restoration of the island’s gardens.                                                                     

This story was originally published on Preservation Online on May 12, 2006.

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