Green Gulch Farm

Before his death in 1971, Shunryu Suzuki asked his dharma heir Richard Baker to find a farm where lay practitioners could live and practice together. The San Francisco Zen Center bought this 115-acre coastal valley in 1972 from George Wheelwright, co-founder of Polaroid, on the condition that the center remain open to the public and promote agricultural awareness; a hay barn became the zendo of the Green Dragon Temple. Horticulturist Alan Chadwick, who brought Steiner-influenced biodynamic techniques, was an original garden architect, and his grave is marked by a stupa on the land.

The center runs a working organic vegetable farm that supplies Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, formal flower and herb gardens, and the full Soto Zen schedule: Sunday zazen and dharma lecture open without pre-registration, tea and lunch by donation, and guest stays in the Lindisfarne Guest House and Wheelwright Center.

Visiting

Green Gulch's visit pages carry the Sunday program (zazen 8:15am, dharma lecture 10:15am, lunch 12:45pm by donation), garden hours (9am to 4pm daily) and guest rates ($160 to $335/night for 2026); note that day-visitor parking for passing hikers is currently not offered.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_Gulch_Farm_Zen_Center,_April_2017_-_01.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Frank Schulenburg.