11 - Alcatraz Gardens

WAYSIDE LAYOUT: Cream colored, vertically oriented panel with a dark banner running across the top. The banner reads “Golden Gate National Recreation Area” on the left and the National Park Service logo on the right. This panel with two columns. The first column has text, then a photograph with logos below it. The second column has 3 pictures each above the other. 

FIRST COLUMN: 

TEXT: Alcatraz Gardens: A long and colorful history. Imagine Alcatraz as a barren rock. That’s what the island was until the 1860’s, when the first residents planted gardens in pockets of imported soil. Sent to live on this cold, gray island, Army families took refuge in a Victorian-style flower gardens around the Citadel.  

Prisoners also gardened. Army prison crews, and later, a few closely watched penitentiary inmates, created a manicured landscape that bloomed until the prison closed in 1963. The flowering terraces, rose beds, and lawns then grew wild for 40 years. Luckily, hundreds of garden species brought to the island by a century of gardeners managed to survive and even thrive.  

In 2003, the Garden Conservancy, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the National Park Service began a joint effort to preserve and restore the historic gardens.  

DESCRIPTION: Colored photograph of a volunteer tending to plants in the garden with a view of the bay in the background.  

CAPTION: Volunteers have helped to rebuild and replant the Alcatraz gardens. Join them by calling [phone], or e-mail [e-mail]. 

DESCRIPTION: Logo for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. 

CAPTION: Garden Interpretive signs funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.  

SECOND COLUMN:  

DESCRIPTION #1: Black and white image of the gardens outside, with the prison exterior in the background. 

CAPTION: In the 1860’s, formal gardens featuring species from around the world made Alcatraz feel more like home for military families.  

DESCRIPTION #2: Colored photograph of a man standing behind a bright red flowered bush.  

CAPTION: Residents and inmates built gardens in the foundations of Officers’ Row homes. Here, an inmate stands in the flowering terraces, 1942-46.  

DESCRIPTION #3: Colored photograph of the plants in the garden, looking out towards the bay, with the city in the background.  

CAPTION: Visitors to Alcatraz find a landscape alive with plants that survived 40 years of neglect after the prison closed.