Down a winding road, through graveled pathways, we stumbled on a private gathering at Filoli. Guests were served champagne and hors d’oeuvres on a private garden terrace before being ushered into a garden room with floor-to-ceiling windows. For a few minutes, the distance between past and present disappeared completely, and it became easy to picture what entertaining here may have looked like decades ago.
The garden room is a separate building from the centerpiece of the property, a Georgian style mansion, built in 1917. As a cultural destination, the Filoli estate, south of San Francisco, is a meticulously kept 650+ acre property including formal gardens, terraces, and sweeping grounds built for entertaining during California’s Gilded Age.
On the Terraces
We visited during rose season, when the gardens are green and lush and easy to lose time in. The roses in full bloom were labeled so a novice could identify their favorite color and style, and with between 150 and 200 varieties to choose from, it was an almost intoxicating display. For a moment, it felt as if we’d stepped into a magic garden where you’d be served tea and crumpets under the shade of a pergola. Or maybe that was the champagne from the abandoned party table on the terrace talking.
The gardens pull you forward in stages, with each layer adding color and complexity. One terrace holds bonsai trees arranged on large tables around its perimeter, displayed intentionally for close examination. Another offers benches to rest and take in the view. Throughout the property, arched doorways beckon to other areas unseen, maybe for a drink, a party, a rest or a tête à tête.
Wandering the Mansion’s First Floor
Inside the historic residence, the kitchen had a pantry, a giant coal oven, an icebox, and a walk in safe for silver. Down a short hallway where linens were stored in a giant armoire, there was also a dedicated area for the greensman — the staff member responsible for cutting and arranging flowers from the estate’s gardens, complete with old boots and dried flowers on the floor. The whisper of years gone by where flowers from the garden were prepared for display in this room was so clear it may as well have been projected on the wall in a silent film format. On that screen, armfuls of roses would have been carried in from the gardens before dinners and parties, to be displayed in giant vases in the oversized parlor rooms.
Wandering through the first floor of the mansion, we found a formal dining room, several parlors, a billiards room, and a ballroom. One drawing room contained a small secret bar, closet-sized, dimly lit, and intimately luxurious behind a hidden panel door. Tucked into the corner of a wood paneled room with a giant fireplace, it was a signal that this was where the party may have started or ended, depending on the night.
Echoes of Another Time
Like many estates of this scale and era, Filoli carries beauty alongside the awareness that houses like this hold complicated histories too. There are stories in the walls, and maybe not all of them good, as is true with so many of these properties. There were oversized prints of United States census pages on one wall, another reminder of how California, and the country, has grown. You carry both with you as you continue to move through the house.
An afternoon at Filoli offers a glimpse into another era, one built around gardens, entertaining, architecture, and light filled rooms designed for wealthy people to gather in. You leave the well curated gift shop dreaming of the luxury of time, afternoon strolls surrounded by flowers, hidden rooms, and archways leading somewhere you still wish you had explored.
