Journal of Alta California

Gardener of Earthly Delights

  When Ruth Bancroft was 64 years old, she got down on her hands and knees and etched tiny holes throughout a chunk of her family’s land in Walnut Creek. Into each went a small cactus, succulent or other arid-climate plant. She’d spent 20-some years acquiring such curiosities, stashing them in four-inch pots in a maze of glass and shade houses

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