This wonderful mountain oasis is about an hour and a half from Auburn. Sadly, it will close for business at the end of the month. It is an easy but curvy drive to Sierra City, a beautiful escape into a fantasy trip to Claude Monet's garden at Giverny at Vernon outside Paris.

The food is perfectly prepared and served buffet style in an outdoor restaurant setting, nestled among pines, firs, alders, willows, aspen and many blooming shrubs.

-Ishmael

This story is taken from Sacbee / Debbie Arrington

A little Monet in the mountains

darrington@sacbee.com

Published Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

For his Sierra home, Don Phillips created a view to reflect his global travels. Then he opened his gardens to the world, allowing visitors to share in the mountain magic.

"I was looking out over the pond at the buttes, at all the flowers and trees, and I realized: How could I not share this with others?" Phillips recalls. "This is a truly beautiful place."

Since he first opened his hideaway to the public in 2002, more than 20,000 visitors have made the trek up Highway 49 to Big Springs Gardens near Sierra City to see Phillips' masterpiece. They marvel at the trout-filled pond, studded with water lilies and ringed by a vast collection of flowers. They hike among the big trees in the shadow of the Sierra Buttes. They dine surrounded by beauty.

With a graceful, arching bridge over the pond, Big Springs Gardens has earned the nickname "Monet in the Mountains," referring to the garden-loving French impressionist painter Claude Monet. Hundreds of modern-day painters have been drawn to Big Springs for inspiration. This sanctuary also has hosted many weddings.

But soon this magical window will close. Hampered by health problems, Phillips has decided this will be the gardens' final summer open to the public, at least under his ownership. Closing day is Sept. 27.

"It's just time," he says, sitting on the terrace overlooking the tranquil pond. "I'm turning 86 (in October). I've tried to find a buyer. I'm still hopeful someone will come forward to keep the gardens going. There's no other place like it."

The price tag for this sanctuary: $5.5 million. But the experience it offers is priceless.

"The whole time I've been here, I keep thinking this is paradise in the forest," says Sara Nelson, a first-time visitor from Reno. "There's got to be a way to keep them open. I'd volunteer my time, pulling weeds."

"It's just so peaceful," adds Debbie Guinzali, also of Reno.

Jan Pantone heard about Big Springs from her art teacher four or five years ago. When she read of the gardens' impending closure, she hurried up the mountain to see for herself.

"I want to get a group together and come back," she says. "There's so much to paint."

Earlier this summer, Phillips notified more than 2,000 garden friends of his landmark's final season. They've responded en masse. Open only Thursday through Sunday by reservation only, the gardens host scores of diners each day who combine a fine meal with the great outdoors.

"We started the restaurant to support the gardens," Phillips explains. "In Europe, all I would have had to do is open the gates and people would come for the gardens. In the U.S., you've got to feed people, too."

With its limited schedule, Big Springs now offers only meal packages. To see the gardens, visitors need to partake in the bountiful buffet or barbecue, which are worth the long drive. But they're welcome to stroll the 113 acres before and after their meal as much as they please.

And there's a lot to see. Miles of hiking trails thread through the forest of pines and cedars.

Fed by natural springs, the glimmering pond covers more than an acre. Hundreds of Japanese maples and aspens grace its shores. In this picture-perfect setting, footlong rainbow trout happily leap from the water while ducks swim lazily in the sun.

"People constantly tell me how lucky I am to find such a beautiful natural pond," Phillips says. "I want them to believe it's all natural. But deep down, my ego wants to tell them, 'I created this.' It only looks like it's always been here."

That's part of the wonder of Big Springs. Phillips turned a steep, jagged slope covered with scrub into a flat, open meadow and pond. The stone terrace overlooking the water has room for 132 diners.

"When we started, we had only enough flat space for one picnic table," he says. "This was a lot of hard work."

The key to the gardens' success rests below the surface.

"This place sits on a huge clay belt," Phillips explains. "That's perfect for building a pond. And this place is full of water."

At 5,000 feet in elevation, the gardens boast many plants that aren't supposed to grow well at such heights. But Phillips ignored convention to create his fantasy.

"I'm not a horticulturist," he says. "I have no formal training. But I plant what I like."

Phillips took up gardening in retirement. A former assistant dean of Stanford's business school, he enjoyed a vast and varied career, succeeding in agribusiness and real estate. He started construction on his Big Springs home in 1987, about 20 years after he bought the property.

Architect Jim Babcock, who worked with Phillips on projects in Monterey, designed the mountain retreat. The living room features two-story windows with a panoramic view of the 8,600-foot Sierra Buttes. Two bedrooms also fill with light.

"I wake up every morning to the most beautiful rosy dawns with the sun rising over the buttes," says Phillips, who lives with a longtime female companion. "It's fabulous."

The house is filled with mementos from his travels, including several paintings, European antiques and a gigantic French tapestry.

For his garden view, Phillips decided to bring home another bit of France. That includes the Monet-inspired bridge.

"I stole it," he says of the idea. "But Monet took the idea from someone else, too. That's a Japanese bridge from an 18th century woodblock print. We all borrow from what we love.

"I've had the good fortune to visit gardens all over the world, but Giverny impressed me like no other," Phillips adds of Monet's French home. "Monet started with a flat piece of dry, uninteresting ground with nothing on it. And he created such a beautiful garden. His site wasn't very good, but God gave him incredible sight. That garden was a credit to his immense talent, Monet's eye.

"I started with a spectacular site, with the Sierra Buttes in the background and a spring pumping out 1,000 gallons a minute," he continues. "God said to me, 'This guy needs all the help he can get.' "

Phillips began the gardens in 1988, right after the house. He never hired a landscape architect or created a plan.

Instead, he let nature lead his way.

"I've always liked plants, but I never considered myself a gardener," he says. "I'm still operating on a learner's permit."

Along the foundation, he planted scores of pink peonies mixed with white Iceberg roses. Nearby, rhododendrons and hardy azaleas make themselves at home under the forest canopy.

With lavender and white blooms, hostas gather in the shade. Bursts of gold Black-eyed Susans cascade into the meadow along with fluffy clouds of white Shasta daisies and lacy drifts of yarrow.

"None of these are natives, but they all look so natural," Phillips says. "That's the trick – to make them look like they belonged here."

For example, he wanted the look of wild roses. But instead of going native, he chose petite pink-and-white Ballerina shrub roses, which resemble their wild counterparts but with tamer growth.

Because of the short growing season and heavy snowfall, the gardens have always been a challenge. Each fall, every Japanese maple is wrapped into a protective cocoon to keep the snow from snapping off limbs.

"It takes our crew three weeks to wrap up the maples, but only one week to unwrap them," Phillips says. "We also have to wrap the rhododendrons and other bushes."

About 30 acres of the Big Springs site is cultivated and naturalized garden. The rest is nature's work.

"I still consider it a juvenile garden, just now moving into teenage," he says. "But it's maturing beautifully. I wonder what it will look like when it's all grown out.

"I've had a pretty good run here," he adds, "but there's a time to get off stage. What I'm hoping – and it's a real long shot – is that someone will come along and fall in love like I did and do something to share this place with others. Nothing would be better – for me or all those people who love it, too."

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Call The Bee's Debbie Arrington, (916) 321-1075.