The main gate at Sherman Library & Gardens has moved. Not permanently, and not far. For the duration of a 60th-anniversary reimagining of the grounds, the entrance has slid around the corner from Coast Highway to Dahlia Avenue, and the small shift has done something the calendar could not: it has quietly turned the block that most Flower Streets residents already walk down twice a day into the neighborhood's civic front porch for August.
If you live on Carnation, Dahlia, Jasmine, Iris or Poppy, the point of this post is narrow. The next four weekends will be busier at 2647 E. Coast Highway than any four weekends this year, and the way to enjoy them is to stop treating Sherman as a garden you sometimes drop into and start treating it as the anchor of a Saturday.
What The Side Door Is Hiding
The Gardens are open and welcoming guests during construction, with the entrance currently on Dahlia Avenue and signage guiding the way, while portions of the 2.2-acre botanic grounds are temporarily fenced off. The institution is 60 this year, founded in 1966 by Arnold Haskell and named for his mentor Moses Hazeltine Sherman, and the reimagining is the first serious refresh of the grounds in a generation.
What that means in practical terms: your visit in August is not the visit you took a friend on in 2019. Some paths are closed. You will hear construction. The tropical conservatory with the koi pond and the 82-year-old California pepper tree on the Pepper Tree Patio are still there. The point of coming this month is not comprehensiveness. It is the temporary exhibition sitting in the parts of the garden that are open, and the two ticketed evenings built around it.
The August Calendar, Without The Fluff
Four dates on the grounds are worth putting in the family calendar this month. They are not interchangeable.
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Fri Aug 7, 5–7 p.m. | Yappy Hour | After-hours ticketed event, leashed dogs welcome, water stations and complimentary treats on the grounds |
| Wed Aug 12 | Paint Your Pet: Acrylic Paint & Sip | Pet-themed class tied to the summer exhibition |
| Thu Aug 13, 8 a.m. | Good Morning CdM | Chamber breakfast, second Thursday of every month, community topics |
| Sat Aug 15, 8 a.m.–4 p.m. | Petals & Pistons Car Show | Grounds open all day, food and beverages for sale |
Petals & Pistons is the one that changes the character of the block. Flower Streets residents who normally walk to breakfast at Zinc Cafe or coffee at Alta on a Saturday morning are going to find the parking pattern on Dahlia and Fernleaf unusually kind before 8 a.m. and unusually punishing between 9 and 2. That is not a warning. It is a suggestion to walk.
About The Dogs
The summer installation is called Dog Days of Sherman, and it is the reason the exhibition programming has skewed pet-friendly all season. The work is by Elizabeth Laul Healey, a mixed-media artist whose sculptures have shown in galleries across the United States and Mexico. Six life-sized or larger dogs, built from glass, mosaic tile, and found objects over foam-and-metal armatures, are staged through the open portions of the garden.
Healey calls the series Watch Dogs because each sculpture contains at least one watch or timepiece, her signature move. The pieces reward the second lap. On the first pass you register the mosaic and the scale. On the second you start counting timepieces and noticing where she has buried them: a collar, a ribcage, a paw. Executive director Scott LaFleur has been open in press appearances about being surprised by the public response to the six sculptures, and the exhibition is scheduled to close at the end of summer, which is what makes August the month to see it rather than the month you meant to.
The installation was underwritten by Sherman member Marilyn Macy Green. If you have wondered who pays for the outdoor art that appears in the garden every summer, the answer is usually a named neighbor.
Dinner After, Without A Car
The best argument for Sherman as a Saturday anchor is not the garden. It is what happens when you leave through the Dahlia gate at closing and choose which direction to walk.
Head south on PCH and you are five minutes from Bandera at 3201 E. Coast Highway, the Hillstone-owned rotisserie whose stone oven does the roast chicken that has kept the room full since the 1990s. Another six blocks and you reach Five Crowns at 3801, the Lawry's-family steakhouse dressed as an English country inn since 1965, where the SideDoor gastropub attached to it runs a happy hour from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Neither of these needs a reservation for two at the bar if you time it before six.
Walk north on PCH from the Dahlia gate instead and the character changes. CdM Restaurant at 2325 E. Coast Highway is the one to know about if you have never been downstairs. The main dining room upstairs is a peacock-blue-booth room that does a Piri Piri chicken and a whole crispy branzino. Underneath it, a small speakeasy called Under CdM takes phone reservations separately from the restaurant above. It is the kind of room a Flower Streets resident can walk to in flats.
For a Sunday morning after Petals & Pistons, 608 Dahlia is the on-site kitchen at Sherman itself, run by executive chef Jessica Roy. Members get in through the same Dahlia entrance you already used.
The Second Thursday Nobody Talks About
The other August date worth flagging is Good Morning CdM on August 13, held on the second Thursday of every month by the Corona del Mar Chamber. It is a community breakfast with coffee and pastry and a rotating speaker roster of legislative and city representatives, and it is one of the few venues in the neighborhood where you can put a question directly to a council member without submitting a public-comment card at seven in the evening. If the Sherman renovation, the E-bike enforcement pattern that has been picking up on Marguerite, or the summer traffic flow on Bayside are on your mind, this is the room.
You do not need to be a business owner to attend. You need to show up.
Why Any Of This Matters On A Block Level
The Flower Streets have always had a peculiar geography. The lots are small, the setbacks are shallow, and the walking radius from the middle of Jasmine or Fernleaf to a full dinner is maybe eight minutes. That density is the reason the village works the way it does. It is also the reason a single institution reopening its main gate on a new street can quietly reroute a season.
Sherman is not just a garden this summer. It is a construction site with a car show, a temporary art exhibition with a closing date, a monthly chamber breakfast, and a restaurant with a chef whose name is worth learning. If you have lived here for three years and only been inside twice, August is a good month to fix that. The Dahlia entrance is doing you a small favor. It is putting the door on your side of the block.
Bring the dog on the seventh. Walk to Bandera on the eighth. Skip the parking hunt on the fifteenth. And when the sculptures come down and the main gate eventually swings back to Coast Highway, you will have known the odd, in-between summer where the neighborhood's civic center briefly moved half a block inland.
If you have been watching the village shift this summer and wondering what it means for the block you live on, that is a conversation we have often. Domaine Luxury Properties works quietly with Flower Streets owners on timing, presentation, and the small decisions that add up when it is time to talk about the house. Request a private home valuation and consultation when the moment is right for you.
