Isabel Stine so loved what she saw that she decided to build her very own slice of Japan near her home in California--in the hillsides of Saratoga.

The Stines had visited the original Hakone--a celebrated, mountainous resort with picturesque hot springs and gardens-- near Mount Fuji in Japan. When they decided to build a summer resort for family and friends in 1915, they created their own Saratoga retreat in Hakone's image.

Between 1917 and 1929, the Stines spent approximately $100,000--a great deal of money at the time--to construct Hakone as a beautiful re-creation of traditional 17th-century Japanese estate gardens. The Stine family spent many happy years in the 17-acre fantasy retreat before they sold it in 1932.

Following that first sale, the gardens changed hands a number of times, but few people know the complete history--such as, when the gardens were left neglected and a group of unlikely friends banded together to become Hakone's saviors.

From approximately 1959 to 1960, the Stines' beloved gardens hung in limbo, overgrown with leaves, vines and poison oak in the absence of caring hands.

What finally saved the gardens was the collaboration of six families in 1960 to purchase Hakone and restore it to its former glory.

Six families to the rescue

Joseph Gresham, a Saratoga resident and developer, lived just across the street from Hakone. Eldon Gresham, his son, recalls a visit paid by Alexis Gregory, a relative of the descendants of the Tilden family, who had purchased Hakone from the Stines in 1932.

"Alexis Gregory came across the street to see my father, to ask if he wanted to buy Hakone," Eldon Gresham recalls. "My father decided he didn't want to tackle it alone, so he called the Chinese partners."

The Greshams were good friends with restaurateur Dan Lee. The two saw a lucrative business opportunity in purchasing Hakone, so Lee called in his partners.

Lee was a partner in the successful Palo Alto-based Chinese restaurant Ming's with John C. Young and George Hall. Young and Hall were brothers-in-law--their wives, Mary Young and Marie Hall, were sisters. Young and Hall were also partners in a few other businesses, including the Wing Nien Soy Sauce Manufacturing Company and Kan's Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, named for their other partner in the restaurant, John Kan. The Greshams were longtime patrons of Ming's and had met and become fast friends with Dan Lee through their many visits.

At the time, John Kan was the most high-profile of the Chinese-American partners. Kan's has been called the first elegant Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, and was frequented by many celebrities, including Donna Douglas of Beverly Hillbillies TV fame and legendary singer Frank Sinatra.

These four Chinese-American families decided to join together with Gresham and his son, Eldon, to purchase the gardens for $96,500 in 1960.

"Everyone got along really well on the whole deal," Lee says.

However, Eldon Gresham says that when they took ownership of Hakone, they definitely had a large task on their hands.

"Hakone was in a sad state of affairs," he recalls. "It was like a jungle was closing in on it."

The partners reinstated one of the previous gardeners, and Eldon Gresham says he and his father spent an incredible amount of time in the gardens over the next few years, completely restoring them. He says many areas of the gardens were overgrown with poison oak.

"There were poison oak stems so thick we had to use an axe," he says. They also burned sage brush, vines and tree trimmings as far as the eye could see. They worked hard to drain, repair and refill the pond; rebuild the caretaker's house, the well, the wellhouse, the garage, the moon deck and the horse barn; rebuild and repave the access road; and get the water and electrical systems working again.

Eldon Gresham says that while many in Saratoga were wary of the Greshams and thought they planned to develop Hakone and the land it was on, their only hope was to restore the gardens to their previous glory.

"My father was driven to save it, because he was not only a developer but a preservationist," he says. "We owned around 110 acres in the area. We didn't need any more land to develop. We had plenty. And we had the equipment to save that place."

"They had the utmost respect for Hakone as a classic Japanese garden and did nothing to alter its motif," says historian Connie Young Yu, the daughter of John C. Young. "They did not remove anything from the gardens, nor did they add a single Chinese or other Asian item that was not authentic.

"I went there with my folks and friends for visits and picnics. We only brought things into the small building that housed the kitchen--we never even ate in the Japanese buildings. They were to be kept pristine."

At that time, for people from the two cultures to be friends-- let alone business partners--was still uncommon.

"In the 1960s, in this area, there were very few Chinese; you could almost count them on one hand," says Steven Hayes Young, Young's great-nephew. "The partners were among the most prominent businessmen and celebrated Chinese-Americans of their time."

"[Back then] there was a lot of segregation--Asians, blacks, Mexicans--in the valley," recalls Eldon Gresham. "But my father was colorblind."

Since the Federal Fair Housing Law was not passed until 1968, many who were not full-blooded white American had trouble buying property in the United States following World War II. Many Chinese--as well as people from other nations--who had come to the United States to make a new life ended up having to ask white American friends to purchase property for them and then sell or transfer the property to them later.

"This was before equal rights, before fair housing," Yu says.

Yet, as Eldon Gresham will point out, Chinese money helped to save a Japanese garden.

How Hakone came to be

The gardens weren't always in such a state of disarray--when they were originally built by the Stines, they were created with nothing but the best.

Hakone Gardens and Retreat Center was built in Saratoga, overlooking the "Valley of the Heart's Delight," as Silicon Valley was called in 1915. The Stines, San Francisco art patrons, purchased 17 acres of the Saratoga hillside. When it came time to choose a design for their fantasy retreat, Isabel Stine drew inspiration from her lifelong interest in Japanese culture and travels to Japan. In an effort to make her California-based Japanese gardens as close to the real thing as possible, Isabel enlisted the help of architect Tsunematsu Shintani and landscape gardener Naoharu Aihara, who was born to a family of Japanese imperial gardeners.

In 1917, Shintani designed the upper house, which sits upon a "moon-viewing hill," from which the moon and the gardens can both be seen. The moon-viewing hill is a popular tradition in authentic Japanese gardens. The lower house was originally built in 1922 as a Western-style summer retreat; it became the caretaker's house in 1927. (It was converted into the present Cultural Exchange Center in 1991. The new building is modeled after a Kyoto tea merchant's house and shop and was constructed in Japan and shipped to Saratoga to be raised on site.)

Hakone contains four gardens--the Hill and Pond Garden, which is at the heart of Hakone and was created for strolling; the Tea Garden, which provides a calm and quiet walk and is enclosed for privacy; the Zen Garden, which consists of raked patterns of gravel and stone intended for meditative viewing only and is therefore never entered; and the Kizuna-en, which is a bamboo garden.

The Stines enjoyed their tranquil, Japanese escape until 1932, when they sold it to East Bay financier Major Charles L. Tilden, for whom Tilden Park in Berkeley was named. The Stines sold Hakone Gardens to the Tildens for $12,000, according to Connie Young Yu.

The Tilden family went on to make many improvements to the gardens, including hiring Japanese landscape gardener James Sasaki. Sasaki partnered with a designer to restore the beautiful gardens. The Tilden family also installed the Moon Gate, which still stands today.

When Tilden died, ownership was transferred to his sister, Mrs. Walter Gregory. She died around 1959 and left the gardens to her son, Michael, a college professor in Berkeley.

During this time, the gardens went untouched.

After a while, Michael Gregory sold the gardens to the six partner families, who owned and maintained Hakone for the next several years.

City takes ownership

Returning the gardens to the state they deserved took a lot of work and money from the partners. As a few years went by, many people in Saratoga grews concerned that the six partner families would subdivide or sell the gardens, or even tear part of them down. Eldon Gresham says those thoughts never entered the minds of the partners.

Saratoga City Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith says that although she was not involved in city government at the time, she remembers those fears, but does not believe they were warranted.

"There was a great fear that it was going to be developed," she says. "But they could have developed it and made a lot more money, and they didn't, whatever the rumors were."

Eldon says that in 1965, they were approached and asked if they would sell the gardens to the city of Saratoga. He says that his good friends Bill Glennon, the mayor of Saratoga at the time, and Kenneth Hartman, a city councilman, advised the partners to sell Hakone to the city so that it could be preserved. With the city as owner, the partners hoped Hakone could be protected and cared for.

Keeping the gardens in the state they deserved took a lot of work and money each month.

In 1965, local real estate broker Miles Rankin says Joseph Gresham gave him a call and said he was interested in putting Hakone Gardens up for sale. Rankin, a Saratoga resident who did a lot of work helping to preserve historical property in the city, says he went right over and took a tour of the gardens.

"I immediately turned to Joseph and I said, 'Stop. These gardens are very valuable and need to be preserved. Before we do anything, let's talk to the county or the city and see if they might be able to buy it,' " recalls Rankin.

Rankin says Joseph thought the idea was brilliant.

"He said, 'I love it, let's give them a call,' " Rankin remembers. He says there was never any consideration of selling the gardens to anyone else. With the city as owner, the partners were confident Hakone could be protected from subdivision and development.

Rankin brokered the sale of Hakone Gardens to the city of Saratoga. The deal was finalized in 1966.

"[Hartman and Glennon] were the moving force for the city. They had enough vision to come and see us. We never offered it for sale," Eldon Gresham says. "Without them, I don't think the city would have come to own Hakone."

The purchase was finalized in 1966, and the city protected Hakone from subdivision and development.

In an effort to further restore the gardens, the city hired Tanso Ishihara, a Kyoto-trained landscape gardener who was familiar with Hakone in Japan.

"Ishihara began consulting with the renowned Japanese architect Kiyoshi Yasui, a 14th-generation architect to the Imperial household, and together they developed a master plan for expanding," according to the Hakone Foundation on the gardens' official website.

This partnership with the Japanese gardeners blossomed into a sister city partnership between the cities of Muko, Japan, and Saratoga, which is still alive and cherished to this day.

In 1984, the city turned ownership of Hakone Gardens over to an informal group of Saratoga citizens who pledged to care for the gardens. In 2000, the official Hakone Foundation was formed and maintains the gardens to this day.

"The Hakone Foundation signed an exclusive 55-year lease with the city of Saratoga to carry out this mission ... to preserve, enhance and maintain Hakone for future generations," says the Hakone website.

Although the Chinese-American portion of Hakone's history is not well-known, the surviving partners--Dan Lee, June Lee and Eldon Gresham and his wife, Deon, and their relatives, including Steven Hayes Young and Connie Young Yu--welcome the task of preserving the memories and spreading awareness of these early Chinese-American pioneers and the role they played in American history.

"I remember having Easter egg hunts there with my family, and my daughter was married there," says Deon Gresham.

"I have great memories of Hakone Gardens," Yu says. "My parents loved it."

These days, Hakone Gardens is faring well for itself. In 2001, Hakone was selected by the Japanese government as a location for the 50th anniversary celebration of the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty between the United States, Japan and 46 other nations, which officially ended World War II. Hakone also recently hosted the 35th prime minister of Japan, Morihiro Hosakawa, in a celebration of the cultural ties between America and Japan.

Hakone Gardens will also appear as the backdrop for many scenes in the upcoming film Memoirs of A Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall and based on the novel by Arthur Golden. The movie will star Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai and Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Today, Hakone hosts many cultural events throughout the year, and guided tours are available April through September on weekends. According to Hakone's website, more than 40,000 people visit the gardens annually, one-third of them from Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa.

Most importantly, Hakone Gardens is being well cared for, and it still serves as a valuable bridge between cultures that the entire Saratoga community can benefit from.

For those who admire Japanese culture and always wished they could have a little slice of it near home, Isabel Stine's Japanese fantasy still lives on in Saratoga, almost a century later.

Hakone Gardens is located at 21000 Big Basin Way in Saratoga. For more information, call 408.741.4994 or visit www.hakone.com.