How a Department Store Heiress Turned Her Historic Beverly Hills Estate Into a Must-see Public Garden and Home Tour

By Deborah Belgum The famed Robinson Department store may be long gone, but the family’s legacy lives on in a six-acre Beverly Hills estate in California that has been open to the public for 45 years. Known as the Virginia Robinson Gardens, the compound was built in 1911 by Harry and Virginia Robinson, who wed in 1903 and took a long honeymoon to Europe, India and Kashmir, where the newlyweds collected merchandise for the family department store and themselves. Returning to Los Angeles, California, they were driving one day to the new Los Angeles Country Club when they got lost and ended up on a barren hilltop. What they saw was a view of the Santa Monica Mountains on one side and, on the other side, the plains below that would become the incorporated city of Beverly Hills in 1914

The best California experiences, according to Californians

Virginia Robinson Gardens, Beverly Hills Los Angeles County The Robinson mansion went up in 1911 — among the first in Beverly Hills. (If you remember Robinsons department stores, then you know where the family fortune came from.) When Virginia Robinson died in 1977, she left the 6-acre property to Los Angeles County. Nancey Kredell of Seal Beach writes that the gardens “have great docents with loving stories to tell about Virginia. One side of the property has ferns and palms and is 15 degrees cooler than the west side.” It is open for docent-led tours ($15 for adults, $11 for seniors 62 and up).

Ciao Domenica: All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Jane Austen

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM JANE AUSTIN

By Sunday Taylor, November 18th, 2010

I have always loved the novels of Jane Austen. My favorites are “Emma,” “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Sense and Sensibility.” I have often been amazed that a woman who rarely ventured beyond her small village in England could write about important issues filtered through the microcosm of her small, circumscribed world. She wrote with humor, irony, and sharp insights into human nature and filled her novels with unforgettable characters.

When I heard that UCLA professor Charles Linwood Batten was giving a talk on … Read More

Ciao Domenica: Fall Entertaining & Oeufs a la Neige

FALL ENTERTAINING AND OEUFS A LA NEIGE

By Sunday Taylor, October 15, 2010

I cannot resist a cooking class called “Fall Entertaining.” And so yesterday I found myself at the beautiful Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills. The wonderful Peggy Dark of The Kitchen for Exploring Foods in Pasadena was teaching the class. For those of us in Los Angeles and Pasadena, she is our very own Barefoot Contessa. Warm and engaging, she cooks delicious, unfussy, comfort food and is one of the most popular and successful caterers in Southern California. During the class I felt as if I was … Read More

The New York Time: An Almost-Secret Garden in LA

 

 

AN ALMOST-SECRET GARDEN IN LA

By Caroline Seebohm, March 28, 1993

WITHIN a stone’s throw of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood is one of the most attractive and least known private gardens in the United States, a stylish mixture of Italianate architecture and formal landscape design, with a jungle of rare tropical and subtropical plants and trees.

Designed around a Mediterranean-style palazzo that rises above a steep terraced hillside, the 6.2-acre garden is a testament to the taste and fine esthetic judgment of Virginia Dryden Robinson, a native of St. Louis who moved to Beverly Hills in 1903, bringing … Read More

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