The class is Landscape Plants and Horticulture, and the final entails identifying 40 plants in the garden by genus, species and common name.
Students arrive early for a last-minute cram walk around the garden, in full spring bloom.
Built on several levels with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, the garden surrounds stately Blake House, official residence of the UC president. Managed by the Department of Landscape Architecture, Blake Garden is a student lab as well as an idyllic retreat for the public. The house was designed and built in the early '20s on what was then bleak, windswept acreage by architect Walter Bliss for Cal alumni Anita and Anson Stiles Blake. The Italian Renaissance-style house was planned partly as a windbreak for the gardens to come, designed by Anita's sister, Mabel Symmes. She graduated in 1896, returning as one of Berkeley's first landscape architecture students in 1914.