For the thirty years that Alcatraz served as a prison, the guards, administrative staff and even some prisoners worked to create brightly colored gardens to make life on the windswept island more pleasant. Slowly, through experimentation, they found species that could tolerate the wide range of temperatures, wind and humidity on Alcatraz.
When the prison closed in March of 1963 the gardens were abandoned. Even after the island became part of a National Park in 1973 no funds were dedicated to restoring the gardens.
After four decades in which the gardens were "on their own" the restoration work began. In 2003, the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy teamed up with the National Park Service to begin the process of re-launching the gardens on Alcatraz.
The best part of the story? Some of the species of flowering plants that had been abandoned forty years before were still thriving on Alcatraz, with little or no human intervention over the years.
The group of volunteers who maintain the Alcatraz gardens have their own website, and the gardens are (for us as one group of visitors) a highlight of any visit to Alcatraz.
Opportunity: Volunteer to help maintain and enhance the gardens of Alcatraz, and gain access to areas of the island closed to the public! Here's the info.
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