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A Gardener’s Eden

Articles: A Gardener’s Eden

For more than 60 years Barbara Worl welcomed visitors from all over the world to her enchanting garden in Menlo Park. Photo: Virginia Kean

Barbara Worl, eminent practitioner of gardening—that most ephemeral of arts—died on September 12, 2017, at age 90. Born in Indiana, she made her home in California after graduating in 1950 with a degree in English history from Stanford. With a small inheritance, she bought a house on a 100-foot by 100-foot lot in Menlo Park and began making her first garden. Over a 55-year career as a bookseller at Bell’s Books in Palo Alto, she built up a superb gardening book section and befriended gardeners and old rose lovers around the world.

A border of Barbara’s beloved shrub roses featuring 'Rush', a pink-and-white floribunda, hybrid multiflora, introduced by Louis Lens in 1981 (top right back), deep red 'Prospero', a David Austin rose from 1986 (middleground) and the wonderfully fragrant but one-time blooming ‘Othello’, another Austin introduction, also from 1986. Photo: Virginia Kean

Barbara made three...

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