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This is Bonfante Gardens, which I guess is now called Gilroy Gardens. It used to be the employees-only retreat of one of the most employee-centric employers I’ve ever heard about: the Rayley’s supermarket chain Nob Hill Foods (are there any of these stores outside California?). The Bonfante family were (and still are) very keen on giving their employees access to a culture and club of their own…so I believe the Bonfantes started their own union to negotiate against themselves on behalf of their employees, they built a couple of huge indoor swimming pools for them, a gymnasium, baseball fields, events center, parks, a private athletic club, basketball courts, spa, and of course, their own theme park. There’s about 14,000 Rayley’s workers today, and I believe the majority of these listed amenities are still private-access for them. However the theme park proved to be kind of difficult to keep a handle on and the Bonfantes sold it to the City of Gilroy in 2008, hence the name change.

The crown jewel of the Gardens are the world-famous Circus Trees - which is what you get if Dr. Frankenstein had been a botanist instead of a surgeon. And by ‘Doctor Frankenstein’ I mean his name was ‘Axel Erlandson’. “See the World’s Strangest Trees” he advertised when it was a street sideshow in Scott’s Valley in the 1940’s. Trees with their trunks interwoven like a checkerboard, or two trees growing together as one in an arch, trees with their trunks doing loop-the-loops in swirly designs. This took the art of topiary to a whole different level. There’s a telephone booth tree: a weird swirly tree: arch tree and square knot tree: (that’s not actually a square knot he tied it wrong) basket tree: this kind of nonsense: and what I like to call the ‘ what were you thinking tree’:

He was a man with a unique vision, and once he died, other champions arose to protect the freaky trees from getting bulldozed. They needed to be moved from their location…and who better to take on the challenge than the Bonfantes, who were operating the largest plant nursery in the area at the time. The greengrocers with the green thumbs. Here they are: www.bonfantespecimentrees.com/

Xander’s family has a history in Santa Cruz that intersects with the circus trees. That is not at all relevant, but there it is.

Description

This is Bonfante Gardens, which I guess is now called Gilroy Gardens. It used to be the employees-only retreat of one of the most employee-centric employers I’ve ever heard about: the Rayley’s supermarket chain Nob Hill Foods (are there any of these stores outside California?). The Bonfante family were (and still are) very keen on giving their employees access to a culture and club of their own…so I believe the Bonfantes started their own union to negotiate against themselves on behalf of their employees, they built a couple of huge indoor swimming pools for them, a gymnasium, baseball fields, events center, parks, a private athletic club, basketball courts, spa, and of course, their own theme park. There’s about 14,000 Rayley’s workers today, and I believe the majority of these listed amenities are still private-access for them. However the theme park proved to be kind of difficult to keep a handle on and the Bonfantes sold it to the City of Gilroy in 2008, hence the name change.

The crown jewel of the Gardens are the world-famous Circus Trees - which is what you get if Dr. Frankenstein had been a botanist instead of a surgeon. And by ‘Doctor Frankenstein’ I mean his name was ‘Axel Erlandson’. “See the World’s Strangest Trees” he advertised when it was a street sideshow in Scott’s Valley in the 1940’s. Trees with their trunks interwoven like a checkerboard, or two trees growing together as one in an arch, trees with their trunks doing loop-the-loops in swirly designs. This took the art of topiary to a whole different level. There’s a telephone booth tree: a weird swirly tree: arch tree and square knot tree: (that’s not actually a square knot he tied it wrong) basket tree: this kind of nonsense: and what I like to call the ‘ what were you thinking tree’:

He was a man with a unique vision, and once he died, other champions arose to protect the freaky trees from getting bulldozed. They needed to be moved from their location…and who better to take on the challenge than the Bonfantes, who were operating the largest plant nursery in the area at the time. The greengrocers with the green thumbs. Here they are: www.bonfantespecimentrees.com/

Xander’s family has a history in Santa Cruz that intersects with the circus trees. That is not at all relevant, but there it is.