Our roots.
1959
In 1959, Lester Hawkins and Marshall Olbrich took and exquisite risk and purchased the property that would become the Western Hills Rare Plants Nursery. They were two bohemian radicals from San Francisco who decided to escape the ruckus of the city and live surrounded and inspired by nature. They set out to homestead in Western Sonoma County with no building or gardening skills. Over the next three decades, they seeded an epicenter of Bay Area horticultural innovation and celebration that would become known internationally. Their passion, hard work, and tolerance for risk led to an exquisite collection of plants and trees from around the world.
1991
In 1991, Lester and Marshall bequeath the property to their beloved gardener Maggie Wych, who added critical infrastructure and whimsical touches—including the arched wooden structure now known as “Maggie’s Folly”—and further developed the garden into a destination for the public.
2010
Chris and Tim Szybalski took over in 2010 and made significant investments, improving and rebuilding Western Hills’ physical structures, upgrading its irrigation systems, and revitalizing the botanical collection.
2021
Hadley Dynak and Kent Strader purchase the property in August 2021 with friends Laura Counts and Michael Mechanic. Their vision is to embrace the garden’s legacy and to open it as a public-serving nonprofit. The intent is to use the property as a place for visitors to connect to nature, learn about ecology, find inspiration, express creativity, and encourage new ideas to take root.
today
Western Hills Garden is a collective representation of its owners past and present. As a fiscally-sponsored nonprofit our mission is to link people, plants, and place with possibility. Our strategic pillars focus on preservation programming, and partnerships. We aim to be a place where new ideas, both big and small, can take root.
Press snapshots
Western Hills Garden is shaped by more than plants and paths—it is shaped by the people who have tended, studied, imagined, and cared for this place over time.
Our Oral History Project gathers stories from those who were here, preserving lived memory alongside the living landscape. Through recorded conversations with voices from the past, we honor the garden’s legacy while gaining insight into the values, practices, and relationships that have guided it across generations.
Oral History Project
RG Turner
R.G. Turner was the founding editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine and the first executive director of The Ruth Bancroft Garden, playing a formative role in shaping West Coast horticultural discourse. He first visited Western Hills Garden in 1978 and became a regular presence, coming to see it as both a vital source of plants and ideas and a rare salon—an open, welcoming place of conversation, curiosity, and cultural exchange fostered by its founders, Marshall Olbrich and Lester Hawkins.
