Feeling the Flower Power

Facebook ads are no joke, Zuckerberg’s crew is fully aware of my affinity for flowers. While not technically on my way from Joshua Tree to LA, I made a little field trip to the Carlsbad Flower Fields which happened to be in full bloom. Millions and millions of ranunculus on fifty of the most festive acres I’ve ever seen. Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl and Rose Parade was no slouch in the floral department either. I wound up in the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, and strolling around a sculpture garden and fantastic impressionist collection at the Norton Simon.

$25 a head to bask in the blossoms is a bit steep, especially since there were just the sweet pea maze and the ranunculus in bloom. The tail end of the season offers Sunflowers too, and apparently I had just missed the pick your own blueberry fields. The strawberries in this region are world famous, and you really won’t go wrong with a strawberry treat from the snack shack. It was pretty much never ending fields of photo shoots, with only a couple so boldly obnoxious to bypass the barriers and stand in the middle of the fields as the crews worked to harvest around them. I personally think once was enough for the Carlsbad Flower Fields. It was a feast for the eyes and stomach, but pretty pricey (and packed) for what it was.

$25 for Huntington Gardens went down a little easier. There are rose gardens, desert gardens, jungle gardens, Japanese gardens, Australian gardens, water lily ponds, multiple art galleries, and an impressive library packed with literary treasures. I only spent a couple of hours, but you could honestly spend an entire day. I was hoping to catch the Gainsborough Blue Boy, but it was out on loan to London. The galleries were very interesting, the buildings were lovely, there was truly something for everyone here. I’d been told countless times that I would love it, and they weren’t wrong. If you have a thing for flowers, art, architecture, libraries, or like me- all of the above, it’s a must see and worth every penny.

I went to visit the Fork in the Road art installation while killing time to visit the Norton Simon Museum. It felt timely as I contemplate the fork in my figurative road. It’s just a really big metal fork in the ground, but I thought it was fun and worth a detour. I’m a huge fan of the Getty, but it’s an overwhelmingly massive campus with dozens of exhibit buildings and gardens. LACMA is iconically LA. The Norton Simon flies under the radar, but I think it’s one of the best kept secret gems in Southern California. I’m on a mission to visit all of the Degas Little Dancer Aged 14 sculptures. The critics hated it and it haunted Degas until his death. I’ve seen her at the Musee D’Orsay, the MFA in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a visiting exhibit in Nashville, and I’ve been seeking out housesits in Philadelphia and DC to cross a few more off my list. I’m so glad that mission brought me here, because the collection was fantastic. The website says it is the most remarkable private art collection ever assembled, and I would have to call it a tie with Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Aside from the beautiful Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, and Matisse, there was a sculpture garden around the lily pond, an impressive collection of religious art, renaissance and asian art. I found myself particularly impressed by the floral prints in the gallery, so while I didn’t come for the flowers here, I was very happy about the serendipity. Visiting is pretty affordable at $15 per person, and they have a beautiful cafe in the sculpture garden where you can sit and ponder how incredible it is that humans can spend their time making things so wonderful for the rest of us to enjoy hundreds of years later. I’m wandering around trying to figure out where to put my energy so I can do something that matters, that will make a difference to people, and makes me excited to start each day. There is a percentage of people that could care less about art, but the people that are equally passionate as I am about seeing these gifts from the past will feel equally energized standing in those halls.

If livable art is more your speed, a fantastic collection of architectural wonders called me to Pasadena a couple years ago. The iconic house from The Father of The Bride is here, and across the street is Don Draper’s House. There are also several Frank Lloyd Wright Treasures and the Gamble House which doubled as Doc Brown’s house in Back to the Future, all of which have beautiful landscaping and flowers.

If you’re also taking a road trip up the coast and you pass Long Beach from San Diego to LA, you’ll want to exit to check out the Ferris Bueller house (which isn’t in Chicago with all of the rest of the iconic filming locations.) There’s also the Wayfarer’s Chapel designed by a FLW apprentice, which is still on my wishlist.

I knew LA was going to be a brief stop en route to San Francisco, but the only things I wanted to accomplish in town were to A) see the Little Dancer B) eat Sugarfish Sushi and C) Share a Beverly HIlls Hotel souffle with a dear old friend and hear about her wedding. Mission more than accomplished. I had a fantastic time. LA is going to take some time to blog, I have plenty of suggestions from my many many trips over the years, so I’ll probably save it for another time. Thanks to the power of flowers, this leg of the trip was lovelier than I could have ever anticipated, and if you too are in the pursuit of pretty, I highly recommend a field trip to Pasadena. If you want to walk through fields of flowers as far as the eye can see, then you should absolutely make a trip to Carlsbad. Southern California is lovely for so many reasons, but I think I found the best of the best in a quick 24 hour turn around.