Gilroy Gardens is one of a kind. About an hour south of Silicon Valley, Gilroy Gardens is nestled in the garlic capital of the world, and in fact, you can sometimes catch of whiff of garlic as you amble about this family friendly park. Steven and Samuel and I visited on a hot July weekend to see this attraction marked #19 in
111 Places in Silicon Valley That You Must Not Miss.
Originally a park developed by Michael Bonafante, a supermarket and nursery magnet, it's now run by the City of Gilroy. And instead of Disney or Snoopy characters, it has stuck with a much more satisfying fruit and vegetable theme. Think kiddie rides in the shapes of bananas, strawberries, mushrooms, and so on. Our favorite was the Garlic Twirl, where you spin about in human sized garlic bulbs. Here you see Steven entering the heart of the garlic, and Samuel enthusiastically spinning us faster and faster in the picture above.
But here's the other unique thing about Gilroy Gardens - circus trees. It's really the circus trees that drew me to Gilroy Gardens. The life-long labor of Axel Erlandson a Swedish immigrant and farmer in the San Joaquin Valley, he began training trees to grow in magnificent patterns starting in 1928, and eventually had 60-70 of these "circus" trees. About half a dozen have been preserved in Gilroy Gardens and we tried to see them all. See Samuel standing next to a few above.
As you might expect, Gilroy has an annual garlic festival. This year it has been
"reimagined" as a drive through festival. We settled for visiting Garlic World, where we bought garlic ice cream. And yes, it tastes like garlic, and no, I don't ever need to have garlic ice cream again. Some foods should just never be mixed.
