Most residents know Lacy Park and The Huntington as separate destinations: one is the free public park where you walk the dog and catch the Fourth of July fireworks, the other is the ticketed estate where out-of-town guests go to see the roses. What most residents don't know is that the same person shaped both of them, at the same time, using plants from one to build the other.
This year that connection is about to become visible in a way it hasn't before. On Saturday, September 27, Lacy Park turns 100 with a free morning of tours and history. That same weekend, Friday through Sunday night, The Huntington runs its Mid-Autumn Moon Celebration inside the Chinese Garden a few minutes away. A park hitting a once-a-century milestone and a garden's biggest annual night event are landing on the same three days later this month. That specific overlap will not repeat next year. If you live here, mark September 25 through 27 on your calendar and read on for why these two places have always been more connected than they look.
The Councilman Who Ran Two Gardens at Once
Lacy Park wasn't always a park. Before 1925 it was a shrinking body of water called Wilson Lake, fed by runoff from Mill Canyon that once powered an old mill and irrigated the citrus orchards and vineyards around it. By 1924 the lake had dropped to what city records describe as little more than a mud hole, drying out entirely in some seasons. The city bought the land in 1925 to turn it into a municipal park, and the job of designing it went to William Hertrich, a city councilman who served from 1922 to 1945.
Here's the part that doesn't show up on the park's plaques: while Hertrich was drawing up the new park, he was also the superintendent of the Huntington Estate. Many of the shrubs and trees planted at what's now Lacy Park came directly from the Huntington, donated by the estate Hertrich was running day to day. The park wasn't renamed in his honor. It was renamed in the 1940s for longtime mayor Richard Lacy and his wife Maud. But the plant material underneath that name traces straight back to the same grounds crew building the gardens a mile away.
That's the mechanism behind this month's overlap. It isn't a scheduling coincidence dreamed up by two separate calendars. It's two properties that share a root system, literally, finally showing up on the same three days.
Saturday Morning at the Park
The centennial celebration runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The program leans into the park's history rather than treating the anniversary as an excuse for a generic street fair:
- 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Historical Society tours of Thurnher House
- 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.: Guided bird walks with Pasadena Audubon
- 11 a.m.: Guided tree walk with urban forester Lora Hall
- 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.: Mini train rides for families
- 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.: Bicycle check-ups from The Cub House
- 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Craft activities for children
- 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Community picnic in Area 4
The tree walk is worth building your morning around if you only pick one thing. Hertrich planted this park as a working botanical collection, not just a lawn with a lake, and having someone point out which specimens have been there since 1925 turns a walk you've done a hundred times into something closer to reading the fine print on a document you signed years ago without looking too closely.
Where San Marino Recommends You Picnic
The city itself put together a short list of nearby spots for anyone stopping for food before heading to Area 4, and it reads like a fair cross-section of what's actually open along Huntington Drive and Mission Street on a Saturday morning: Chapresso and Dumpling Bar on Huntington Drive, Colonial Kitchen a few blocks down, Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine, Meat & Essentials, and Noodle World Jr. also along Huntington Drive, and Cielo Cafe and Julienne's over on Mission Street. None of these are new. What's notable is that the city is pointing residents to its own commercial strip for a civic anniversary rather than catering the event, which says something about how tightly this town treats its park and its Main Street as the same neighborhood.
Friday Through Sunday Night, Inside Liu Fang Yuan
While the park spends its Saturday morning looking backward, the Huntington's Chinese Garden spends all three nights looking up. The Mid-Autumn Moon Celebration runs Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each evening inside Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, a 15-acre section of the estate built over multiple phases at a cost of roughly $54.6 million and now counted among the largest classical Chinese gardens outside China.
The format hasn't changed much year to year because it doesn't need to: lanterns lit along the bridges, courtyards, and pathways, live traditional music drifting through the garden, dance performances, and food available at the Jade Court Cafe, the Freshwater Pavilion, and the Terrace of Shared Delights. A lantern-launch station lets visitors write a wish on paper and send it drifting across the central pond.
Tickets are tiered by age and membership status:
| Admission | Price |
|---|---|
| General | $40 |
| Huntington member | $35 |
| Youth (4–11) | $10 |
| Under 4 | Free |
Two logistics notes worth knowing before you go. The lantern-launch line tends to spike in the middle of the evening, so arriving right at 6:30 or waiting until closer to 9 gets you through faster. And the three permanent dining spots get crowded fast. If the lines look long, there's a pop-up food area near the open event space on the west side of the garden that tends to move quicker. Past years have drawn more than 4,000 visitors across the three nights, and the event has a track record of selling out, so this isn't a walk-up-and-buy situation once the weekend arrives.
The One Weekend the Two Overlap
Neither event exists because of the other. Lacy Park is marking 100 years since the city bought a dried-out lake bed. The Huntington runs its Moon Festival every fall regardless of what else is happening in town. But this year the timing lines up so that the same 48-hour window holds a free daylight tribute to the park Hertrich built and a ticketed nighttime tribute to the garden he ran while he built it. You could spend Saturday morning under the trees he planted in 1925 and Saturday night under the lanterns strung through the estate that supplied them, and you'd be tracing one person's work without ever leaving a two-mile radius.
Next September, the park won't be turning 100 again. The Huntington will still run its Moon Festival, most likely on a similar late-September weekend, but the second half of this particular pairing won't have a milestone attached to it. If you've lived in San Marino long enough to take both of these places for granted, this is the year that overlap is worth noticing before it passes.
For more on what makes this stretch of the San Gabriel Valley worth paying attention to beyond a single weekend, Joy Realty Group keeps an ongoing neighborhood guide to San Marino covering the details that shape daily life here, from the parks to the market. If you're weighing a move into town or just curious what your home is worth in today's market, schedule a consultation and we'll walk you through it in plain terms.
