The last outing of 2025 took me (and the whole family) back to San Francisco. While the others went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I visited one of the city’s biggest attractions for horticultural nerds: Salesforce Park. It’s hard to believe, but it took seven years for me to finally make it there (it opened in 2018)!
As has become our custom, we parked at the Richmond Ferry Terminal and took the San Francisco Bay Ferry:
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| San Francisco Bay Ferry docked at the Richmond Ferry Terminal |
The 35-minute ferry ride offers panoramic views of San Francisco and beyond. We were lucky; we had both dramatic clouds and even a bit of sun:
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| View of downtown San Francisco from the ferry |
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| View from the Ferry Terminal |
At 1,070 ft, the 61-story Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco and the second tallest in California (and west of the Mississippi). It was completed in 2018 for $1.1 billion as part of the
Transbay development and named Salesforce Tower after its main tenant, cloud-based software company
Salesforce, which signed a 15.5-year lease valued at around $560 million. Separately, Salesforce paid $110 million for the 25-year naming rights for the Salesforce Transit Center and Salesforce Park. These dollar amounts are crazy, I know.
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| Salesforce Tower |
The Salesforce Transit Center is the primary bus terminal for San Francisco, connecting transit systems throughout the Bay Area. The 1.5 million sq.ft. structure cost a staggering $2.2 billion (that's in addition to the $1.1 billion for the construction of Salesforce Tower), but it completely revitalized the
East Cut, transforming it from a historic industrial area into a vibrant neighborhood with high-rise residential and commercial towers that are home to many tech companies.
I got my first peak of Salesforce Park from the street level:
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| The outer skin is white aluminum |
Encompassing 5.4 acres and built at a cost of $33 million, Salesforce Park was envisioned as a living roof that would provide ecological benefits to the dense urban core while serving as a public garden. Elevated 70 ft above street level, it’s organized into
13 distinct areas, representing a diverse collection of Mediterranean-climate plants from around the world. These include small gardens dedicated to the world’s five Mediterranean climate zones: the Mediterranean Basin, the California Floristic Province, Central Chile, the Cape Region of South Africa, and (South)western Australia. The park is home to over 600 trees (~50 species) and 16,000 plants (~230 species) and, according to the
official Garden Guide, allows visitors to “appreciate the climatic conditions and environments from drought to fog, desert to forest that exist in California.”
The soil composition and drainage systems are central to the park’s technical success. Because the garden sits atop the Transit Center, a lightweight engineered soil is used to minimize the structural load while providing necessary nutrients and moisture retention. The green roof ecosystem helps with stormwater management, contributes to carbon sequestration, and ameliorates urban heat island effects. Graywater from the Transit Center is treated and recycled to irrigate the plantings, creating a sustainable infrastructure.
As you can see on the map above, the 13 distinct gardens are connected by a 0.6-mile loop trail, which takes about ½ hour to complete. But that’s without stopping. It took me significantly longer. In fact, I ended up spending a good three hours at Salesforce Park, looping around three times. I took a lot of photos, and even though I edited them down as much as I could, there are still quite a few for you to look at.
While individual plants aren’t labeled, there are quite a few interpretive signs with useful information. Many of the plant IDs below are from
this garden guide.
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| Overview of Mediterranean gardens of the world |
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| Prehistoric Garden plaque |
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| Tree ferns (Dicksonia antartica) and monkey puzzle trees (Araucaria araucana) |
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| Monkey Puzzle Tree plaque |
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| Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) |
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| Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) |
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| Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) |
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| To my relief, the holiday lighting wasn’t in your face |
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| This is what perfectly maintained bamboo looks like |
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| Phyllostachys bambusoides |
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| A ring of Puya coerulea around the central skylight above the Grand Hall below |
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| Puya coerulea |
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| Salesforce Tower with mayten tree (Maytenus boaria) |
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| Australian Garden plaque |
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| Australian grass tree (Xanthorrhoea preissii) |
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| Wider view |
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| Aloe tongaensis |
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| Aloe tongaensis |
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| Fan aloes (Kumara plicatilis) |
Some random snaps:
California Garden:
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| California buckeye (Aesculus californica) and strawberry tree (Arbutus ‘Marina’) |
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| California buckeye (Aesculus californica) and strawberry tree (Arbutus ‘Marina’) |
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| California buckeye (Aesculus californica) makes a striking outdoor Christmas tree |
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| Walkable glass floor, the largest of its kind in the US |
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| Australian tree fern (Cyathea cooperi, now Sphaeropteris cooperi) hanging over the glass wall along the Bus Fountain |
The
Bus Fountain is a 1,200 ft long interactive water feature on the north side of the park. It consists of 247 water jets along a linear pathway of white and gray granite. The jets — their frequency, motion, and height — are triggered by the movement of buses arriving and departing in the transit center at the lower levels.
According to its creator, artist Ned Kahn, “The fountain is like a huge musical instrument that is played by the bus drivers.”
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| Ned Kahn’s Bus Fountain |
Finally, the strangest view in the entire park:
I was very puzzled, but then I started to put two and two together...
...especially after seeing this leaf:
These bizarre-looking stumps are Gunnera manicata, cut back for the winter. Known as giant rhubarb (although not related to edible rhubarb) or dinosaur food, this water-loving Brazilian native is one of the world’s largest herbaceous perennials. Its leaves can grow to 8 ft across. I want to go back in the summer when the gunnera is at its peak — this summer, not in seven years!
The stats for Salesforce Park are stunning: the location, the intricacy, the cost. Not many cities would have been able to pull off a project of this magnitude. I’m glad that San Francisco had the vision and the means to make it a reality, and that I’m able to visit any time I want.
Just as we were getting ready to take the ferry back to Richmond, the sun came out, illuminating the
Bay Bridge — an auspicious ending to a great outing.
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| Bay Bridge from the San Francisco Ferry Terminal, with the Richmond ferry on the left |
Salesforce Park is at 425 Mission Street. It’s open daily from 6 am to 8 pm (9 pm in the summer). To get to the park from the street level, you can use one of the four main elevators or ride in style by taking the free
gondola from Salesforce Plaza located at the southwest corner of Mission and Fremont. I was looking forward to riding the gondola, but it wasn’t in operation when I arrived, and later on the lines were too long. Next time!
© Gerhard Bock, 2026. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.
Absolutely glorious! Thank you for sharing this with us!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great outing! I haven't taken the ferry in several years, thanks for the reminder. I've not visited this garden, and feel like a real dope about it. Sophia randomly has to report to work in the SF office, it's near Salesforce - she takes her break walking through the garden. Your photo of the Bay Bridge is a stunner, it is a lovely bridge -especially with the clouds parting like that.
ReplyDeleteHave Sophia take you to Salesforce Park!
DeleteIt is quite like you read my mind! (email forthcoming) I laughed and then almost choked on my coffee when I read "I don’t know why there’s a grevillea in the “Desert Garden,” but who cares"...and that Gunnera planting has to be AMAZING when it's all leafed out, the trunks are ginormous. Fun visit!
ReplyDeleteI will go back in the summer to see the gunneras!
DeleteWow, Gerhard! You really outdid yourself with this amazing travelog. I want to go now. I've always been interested in the Transbay Center with it's lacy white cover, as seen when I enter into San Francisco from the east bay.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for saying that!
Deletesuper cool
ReplyDeleteWOW. How is it I've never even heard of this park?! Actually, I haven't visited San Francisco in years now but it seems I should have seen coverage from garden publications. Thanks for the excellent coverage of your visit, Gerhard. The signage is well done - not in your face but very useful. The park's obviously well maintained too, reminding me in spots of the Getty Center. Your panoramic SF views are great too.
ReplyDeleteYes, everything was impeccably maintained. I didn't see a single piece of trash.
Deletecompletely off my radar, so thanks for the visit. Now I'm debating whether to get my Aloe 'Medusa' out of its pot and into the ground. Leucospermums in bloom in (November? December?). just seems way early. I'll be making a beeline for this park next time I'm in SF, and I'm overdue for a visit.
ReplyDeleteI'm really surprised that Salesforce Park isn't better known beyond SF. I ran into a friend from Davis when I was there, so people do visit from out of town.
DeleteI wonder whether the artificial soil has a structure that will keep tall plants (such as the Washingtonia) anchored during heavy winds ... or whether the plants will tip over and maybe even fall on an unlucky passerby. I also wonder whether the engineering load calculations took into account 1) the weight of the soil when saturated with rainwater and 2) the eventual weight of the trees. I guess time will tell.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good point. It's one thing knowing the weight of soil and plant material in the installation phase, but is it really possible to estimate the weight of plants when they're mature? I have to assume so :-)
DeleteThat was a cool visit. It's amazing the amount of money and effort that went into constructing and then maintaining this garden. They obviously have someone who cares, though it makes me a little sad that some botanical gardens resort to cheap gimmicks (animatronic dinosaurs) to draw people in whereas other plant destinations don't have to. It probably has something to do with the intersection of the garden's leadership, the amount of money available, and the customer base.
ReplyDelete