Back in 2023 I wondered Where are the gardens and museums created by the Silicon Valley rich? That’s still a good question, in my opinion. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. In addition to voluntarily paying whatever taxes Elizabeth Warren deems fair, why hasn’t he built off-the-charts open-to-the-public gardens near his spaceports? It’s Elon Musk’s birthday today so maybe he will decide to think about the little people for once…
Earlier in June 2026, we visited the Bloedel Reserve, a 140-acre garden surrounding a fancy house that was all built by a lumber executive and his wife. It’s on Bainbridge Island, a suburb of Seattle made possible by the ferry system.
After they got too old to really use it, they turned it over to the public. Walk through the swamp:
Then over the bridge:
Then through the ferns:
Then arrive at what passed for a “mansion” in the days before trillionaires:
If you’re not a Floridian insistent on warm water, it’s a beautiful view from their back yard:
Everyone needs a Japanese tea house and garden to accompany it:
Speaking of Japanese, how about a moss garden like Saihō-ji in Kyoto?
Land Acknowledgement
The nonprofit that runs the garden admits that the land is stolen. Instead of giving it back to the rightful owners, however, they will somehow “honor” the rightful owners by charging everyone, including the rightful owners, $29 to enter (or $1 for those on welfare who show up with their SNAP card). Reserve in advance because they limit the number of people per hour who enter, a coronapanic innovation that they decided to maintain (or maybe they’re still trying to promote social distancing?).
Who is today’s Anti-Bloedel? I nominated succcessful divorce plaintiff MacKenzie Scott Bezos. Wokipedia says that she gave $26.3 billion to various non-profit organizations, including universities, since 2020. This money, nearly 100% of which was unrealized capital gains, was never taxed by the U.S. Treasury or Washington State (with its fresh new capital gains tax that gave us Jeff Bezos, the Starbucks billionaire who said he wanted to pay more tax, et al.), has apparently disappeared without even a ripple in the waters of the various lakes of crises facing the U.S. Perhaps some nonprofit executives have enjoyed higher salaries as a consequence, but the issues she claimed to care about at the outset of her giving (“racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change”) have all gotten worse. Elon Musk ran away with all of the money and he isn’t Black. Scott Weiner, who represents the full Rainbow Flag spectrum, was recently attacked in San Francisco. Donald Trump was elected to a second term as President (proof that “democracy” doesn’t exist in the U.S.). Climate change, as evidenced by the fully baked Europeans, has gotten far worse. If Sam Bankman-Fried was an “effective altruist” maybe MacKenzie Scott Bezos can be characterized as an “ineffective altruist”? Or maybe altruism simply isn’t effective in the aggregate?
Here’s hoping that MacKenzie Scott Bezos will build herself a magnificent mansion with gardens and, following her death in 2070 (she identifies as female and, therefore, due to all of the disadvantages that women suffer, is likely to live only to age 100), will donate it to the public.
> In addition to voluntarily paying whatever taxes Elizabeth Warren deems fair, why hasn’t he built off-the-charts open-to-the-public gardens near his spaceports?
I believe it’s because rich douches now would rather build an artificial reserve that simulates the freshness of gardens, while intermittently catching fire, which would have to be covered with millions of dollars of advertising.
Also, a good chunk of Europeans have found a fully baked cultural match, which sticks together like they do, and tries to set the context, in common areas, for how other people must behave, just like them. And makes others suffer, just as they do, if they don’t toe the line. They are going to have loads of fun.
Avoiding Anderson island because of its connection to computer science at all costs.
If your lovely photos are any indication, the infrastructure at Bloedel Reserve seems to (as well befits a lumber exec) heavily utilize wood. Wood in a wet environment does not endure for very long, so there must be a fair bit of maintenance and replacement of rotten timber going on. Wikipeedz says the property was “opened to the public in 1988 as a family run foundation and registered as a 501(c)3 public charity in 2010”.
I would give the place another 10-15 years before the family-run foundation passes into the control of persons (Bloedel family member or otherwise) who want money enough that their ears will be bent by someone eager to help them profit directly or indirectly by dissolving or unwinding the nonprofit and starting to sell off the property or perhaps by somehow borrowing against it to fund unrelated schemes or something broadly similar.
I think we can all get behind a “billionaire widower or divorcee acquired” tax rate of 100%. I don’t even care what the government says they will do with the money, because as bad at capital allocation as the government is, they don’t hold a candle to billionaire widowers and divorcees.
Alan: Do you mean “billionaire WIDOW”? A widower is a man and, due to oppression, women live longer than men in the U.S. and, therefore, (female) widows are much more common than (male) widowers.
One famous widow, who might have hit billionaire status adjusted for inflation between 1959 and today, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Astor
She married into the massive fortune accumulated by the Astor family via fur trading and Manhattan real estate investment. She became a noted philanthropist, which enhanced her social life, but the money seems to have disappeared without any trace or impact. Maybe some employees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art got higher salaries than they otherwise might have. Other than a courtyard at the Met, ChatGPT can’t find any long-term impact for the foundation, which had at least $770 million in assets (post-Biden dollars): “it helped keep major New York cultural and civic institutions alive or improving through the city’s difficult decades, especially the 1970s fiscal crisis. It also made many smaller neighborhood grants—less visible than museum wings, but important to settlement houses, community programs, education, housing, and services for poor New Yorkers”
In other words, it enabled New York’s nonprofit employees to continue earning above-market salaries and insulated them from the city’s overspending (occasioned by vote-seeking politicians cutting deals with public employee unions, a new-for-1960ish phenomenon). The percentage of New Yorkers on welfare is substantially higher today than it was when Brooke Astor’s poverty-relieving philanthropy began. ChatGPT estimates 4.2% of New Yorkers were dependent on taxpayers in 1959 vs. roughly 50% today. Even “cash welfare”, which we are informed no longer exists, has grown in terms of the percentage of New Yorkers on the dole (the percentage of New Yorkers getting cash dole has declined from a 1995 peak).
I did mean widow. sorry. Thanks for yet another example.
“After they got too old to really use it, they turned it over to the public.”
Musk is not too old to enjoy whatever he has. Maybe in a couple decades he’ll donate something.
John: Agreed, but nothing would stop him from saying “I’m building this amazing thing for myself/my various kids/my various girlfriends (but not that Ashley St. Clair ho) right now, but expect it to open to the public in 2050.”
If memory serves, effective altruism means making tons of money through your life, then when you die donating your hoard to a suitably rationalist charity to buy malaria nets and suchlike. So it seems there is some scope for lateral thinking.
@Philip, To that end, Elizabeth Warren, whose reported net worth has been estimated to be between $7 to $12 million, could state: “I am building my net worth now, but I intend to leave my estate to the public when I am gone.” The same could be extended from other wealthy progressive figures, and by doing so eliminate poverty in the United States as we know it.
George: You raise a great point, but $7-12 million doesn’t seem like enough for much of a garden+endowment. The Silicon Valley Democrats behind the current AI boom, on the other hand…