The 1897 mansion known as Kimberly Crest has offered home tours since the landmark opened to the public four decades ago as a gift to the people of Redlands.

Its 3.5 acres of gardens, however, have never had their own tour.

That situation changes Sunday. That’s when Kimberly Crest begins offering docent-led tours of its gardens, just as it does its house.

“We’ve done them sporadically over the years, but never on a regular schedule,” says Anita West, executive director of Kimberly Crest.

“People have asked, ‘Don’t you do garden tours?’” Sue Totzke, a longtime volunteer and board member, chimes in. “It’s exciting to go through the process and start offering them.”

Tours will be offered the second Sunday of each month. They’ll last one hour with staggered start times of 10, 10:30, 11 and 11:30 a.m. Tickets are $15; visit kimberlycrest.org or phone 909-792-2111.

I thought the tours might be worth some ink here. For one thing, there can’t be a lot of news, per se, out of a historic site that’s been perking along since 1981, so the garden tours might qualify. Also, this would provide an excuse for me to finally visit Kimberly Crest.

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Anita West, executive director of Kimberly Crest, guides a tour of the estate’s Italian Renaissance gardens and gives the approximate age of a magnolia tree on the grounds Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

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So, killing two birds with one stone — not that I would kill any birds, or for that matter would claim to have that kind of aim — I arranged to visit Monday.

However, it turns out Sunday’s inaugural tour is already sold out, blunting the impact of previewing it here.

But the October tours still have slots available. And, despite not truly needing my help, the staff and volunteers are as gracious as you’d wish for at a turn-of-the-century home.

After a warm welcome, we sit down in the elegant dining room for tea and ginger cookies, served on real china. One lump of sugar for me, please.

Then we are out the front door, under the porte cochere where carriages used to turn around, to start our tour.

A 90-foot eucalyptus towers over a small pond, near roses, a jacaranda, a cypress and an unusually named species: a strawberry tree.

It has tiny hanging fruit with a texture like strawberries, Totzke explains. She hasn’t tried one. I follow her lead.

We stroll around the sides of the house to see a sago palm, a natal plum, a Japanese maple, an American elm. Past visitors may recall when the mansion’s south side was largely obscured by wisteria. That was all taken down in 2022 to expose more of the house and allow for repairs.

As this was my first visit, I did not express hysteria over the wisteria. But if you remember it fondly, you may become wistful for the wisteria.

Totzke and West tell stories about the Venus fountain, whose nude figure was considered scandalous by at least one family member; the spot known as Grandmother’s Rose Garden, surrounded by a hedge in a heart shape; and the koi pond, which recirculates water from the upper pond on the other side of the mansion.

Koi can be seen swimming vigorously.

“We have some koi approaching 80 years old,” West confides. “They’re still propagating.”

Let’s hear it for the koi.

The garden was originally planted in 1909 by the second owners, John and Helen Kimberly, who took over from Cornelia Hill.

The Kimberlys made their fortune as co-founders of the Kimberly-Clark conglomerate, of Kleenex fame. They hired a Riverside horticulturist, Franz Hosp, to design and plant the terraced Italian Renaissance gardens and install the fountain.

Jokes Totzke: “We have a French chateau in an Italian garden.”

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Sue Totzke, volunteer at Kimberly Crest, guides a tour of the estate’s Italian Renaissance gardens on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025 in Redlands. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

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After her parents’ deaths, daughter Mary Kimberly Shirk, a philanthropist and onetime president of Scripps College in Claremont, lived in the house from 1931 until her death in 1979. She donated the property to a nonprofit foundation to open it to the public.

Totzke has been volunteering in the garden since retiring 15 years ago from the University of Redlands. Much of the garden was wild and overgrown.

One patch near the upper pond is in view of the balcony outside Mary Shirk’s bedroom. During the pandemic, Totzke began tearing out ferns. This exposed a rose garden.

“Mrs. Shirk wrote about looking down from the balcony on her little bit of heaven,” Totzke relates. “We could never find the rose garden. But here it is.”

Some 10 volunteers work on the gardens regularly, West says, augmented by labor from local service groups connected to businesses and the university. And as we walk, a landscape firm under contract is noisily trimming trees.

Along a brick path, one bit of landscaping remains overgrown, awaiting another burst of volunteer labor to clear.

“We’re constantly restoring and rediscovering things,” West says.

The tours came about when Jim Peterson, a volunteer who also runs a plants and design website, and Totzke came together to craft a tour and catalog the 62 species of plant life. West, who came to Kimberly Crest in 2020, was enthusiastic.

Peterson says there aren’t a lot of gardens that can be toured regularly, citing Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, the Huntington in San Marino and the California Botanic Garden in my own Claremont.

Perhaps to temper expectations, West offers a cautionary note about Kimberly Crest: “It wasn’t developed as a botanic garden. It was a family garden.”

West, Totzke and Peterson will conduct the tours, one of them per group, with 12 people deemed a good number to keep the tours conversational.


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