Filoli estate daffodil days

The Northern California Daffodil Society (NCDS) was invited to present information about daffodils at the Filoli National Trust for Historic Preservation on the last weekend in February for two days on Friday and Saturday.

Filoli is a “Country house” set on 16 acres of a 700 acre farm. It has similar sized formal gardens surrounded by a 654-acre estate located about 25 miles south of San Francisco.

The Bowers wanted to build again after the 1906 earthquake which destroyed many parts of San Francisco. Like many wealthy San Franciscans, they wanted to move out of the city and find larger estates. They choose the 700 acre farm south of the city for their new estate.

Filoli was built between 1915 and 1917 for William Bowers Bourn II, owner of one of California’s richest gold mines and president of Spring Valley Water Company, supplying San Francisco’s water, and his wife, Agnes Moody Bourn. In 1910 they had bought an estate in County Kerry, Ireland, but wanted a country place nearer home.

It is now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Filoli which is open to the public is both a California Historical Landmark and listed on the “National Register of Historic Places”

The name of the estate is an acronym formed by combining the first two letters from the key words of William Bourn’s credo: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.”

Our local daffodil society has participated in several spring events and we represent both the NCDS and the ADS by providing daffodil, society, and educational information. FiLoLi has been an ADS display garden now for several years and we have given presentations and garden tours at those events.

Our displays are normally in a hallway outside two conference rooms where we set up the ADS daffodil panels, a daffodil display, and we answer questions and provide literature to people that stop by.   Representing us was Nancy Tackett, Melissa Reading, John Castor, Kirby Fong, and myself as the fifth wheel perhaps aptly named because I “roamed”.

This year Nancy Tackett gave a modified version of the “Lets Grow Daffodis’s” presentation targeting what grows best in California. I attended the session and was surprised that that was so much intense interest in the information she provided.

Melissa Reading lead a garden tour of about 50 people which was very popular. Nancy and I wanted to go on the tour but we had never been inside the mansion so we did that first, and managed to see the end of Melissa’s tour.

Since the FiLoLi is a National Trust and an offers educational programs, I was impressed by some of their displays.

There is a Wikipedia page about the FiLoLi estate at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoli