Hortense Miller Garden

What the garden is

The Hortense Miller Garden covers two and a half acres on the upper slopes of Boat Canyon in North Laguna. The Friends of the Hortense Miller Garden describe it as a hillside of California natives and introduced plants in coastal sage scrub. The city’s page adds a mid-century modern house on the property. The city’s tour page says the plantings show a mix of native and exotic species. The Friends add that the garden shows which plants grow in Southern California’s coastal zones.

You do not drive up and walk in. The way in is a scheduled tour, described below.

How to visit

Tours are docent-led. The city lists them on one Thursday a month and on most Saturdays, with the days varying month to month. Registration runs through the city: the tour page’s Register for a Tour button links to its recreation class registration page. The Friends’ site also gives a phone number for booking, 949-464-6645, the same number the city lists for its Recreation staff.

The two sources differ on the schedule. The city page says tours start at 10:00 a.m. on one Thursday a month. The Friends’ page says 9:45 a.m., on one or two Thursdays a month. Confirm the day and time when you book.

The home and garden sit inside a private, gated community. For that reason the city says tour groups meet at a designated location and carpool to the property with a docent. Neither page gives a street address for the property, and neither describes parking at the garden, so do not look for a place to park near the gate. Ask for the meeting point when you register.

Plan on about two hours. The city suggests comfortable, flat-soled shoes because the paths are steep and uneven. It also says benches and resting areas are provided throughout the garden.

Groups of 10 or more can ask for a private tour by submitting a reservation request on the Friends’ site, and the Friends say staff reply within a week. Neither the city page nor the Friends’ page states a tour fee, so confirm any cost when you register.

What grows there

The Friends’ garden page names seasonal wildflowers, California irises, Canary Island Pines and drought-adapted shrubs along winding paths. It says the plantings give food and shelter to bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Its FAQ adds native Toyon, Lemonade Berry and Sugar Bush shrubs growing beside drought-tolerant plants from Australia and Mexico, with historic mid-century plantings near the house. Tiger lilies in the garden descend from a bulb Hortense Miller was given as a girl in St. Louis.

The Friends say she preferred a natural, informal garden over a formal one and believed plants from different places could live happily together.

The house

The 1,840-square-foot house is Mid-Century Modern, designed by the young Newport Beach architect Knowlton Fernald, Jr. with Hortense Miller. The Friends say much of the furnishing is as she left it, including a 1956 Eames lounge chair, and that the house appeared on the cover of Sunset magazine in 1969. The city says the docent-led tours cover the garden and the home.

The Friends also run a gallery with rotating artist shows. Its events page lists “Sky Wonder,” an autumn exhibition by the Laguna Beach artist Katlin Evans, on view through mid-December, along with workshops and an annual open house. Ask the Friends how to see a show, since its pages do not say whether you can without a tour.

A short history

Hortense Mann was born in St. Louis in 1908. She and her husband Oscar Miller bought the steep North Laguna land in 1957 and moved into the house in 1959. Oscar died soon after, and she lived there alone until 2005 and worked on the garden daily, according to the Friends. She gave the property to the City of Laguna Beach in 1976, and the Friends of the Hortense Miller Garden formed in 1977, on May 22.

The Friends say the property came through the 1979 Boat Canyon fire. In the 1993 citywide fire, which destroyed 550 homes, large portions of the lower and dry garden were lost while the house survived. See the 1993 fire page for the larger picture. Hortense Miller died on August 7, 2008, at 99.

Gardens and parks you can visit without a booking

If a tour does not fit your dates, the city’s parks do not need a reservation. The parks page lists them, and Heisler Park has bluff-top lawns and paths above the coves in the same part of town. The North Laguna page covers the neighborhood. The Laguna Beach Garden Club’s self-guided Gate and Garden Tour is listed for May 1, 2027.