Marin Art and Garden Center — Attraction in Ross

Fantastic venue, needs a change of event manager. If you are planning on having a wedding, or any event where Iris is involved, I would think about waiting until a replacement is found. We had our Wedding postponed from 09/2020 to 09/2021 due to Covid and in late June 2021 the former event manager, who was awesome, left and in came Iris. MAGC has a customer portal set up which, if Iris ever checked, she would have seen our questions we had. It took over a month to hear from Iris for the first time, she never even reached out to us introducing herself as the new manager, never responded to any calls we made to MAGC or her colleagues, never responded to any emails we sent directly to her, or any voicemails we left directly with her. The first message we got from her was an obviously auto generated message saying that we should think about setting up a rehearsal date, when we had been trying for the past month. All I had asked for the whole month prior was a single email saying that she acknowledges that we exist and will get back to us when she has time, and this never happened. During the week our payment was due, we could not access anything to make the payment, so I tried to reach out multiple times, left voicemails at multiple numbers with MAGC; it wasn’t until I had to get upset with someone about what was happening, and suddenly an email appeared from Iris, AND SHE HAD THE AUDACITY TO TELL ME THAT I WAS OVERDUE ON A PAYMENT. If she could answer a phone call, or read an email we would have never been in this situation. We finally set up our rehearsal time and date with Iris who said there would be no other events in the requested space, but was told there was one going on in a different location of the venue, but it would not be an issue. When we showed up that day for our rehearsal, there was an event in the space we were told we could have our rehearsal. Iris never mentioned anything to us about this event being moved to the space we requested to use, and with a single phone call from her we could have pushed our time forward. She never even told HER OWN COLLEAGUES, the onsite house manager, that the event was moved to the area of our rehearsal, or that we were even having a rehearsal that day. Then comes the wedding day. I should preface this by saying, I was finally able to speak with Iris on the phone, but with Covid getting worse again, she told me there was going to be an indoor mask mandate, to which I said that is okay, but asked if it’s possible to keep the doors of the Livermore Pavilion open so we could have the dancing outside, but in turn keep the music quieter for the noise ordinance; I was told there would be no issues with this by Iris herself. If you haven’t guessed it by now, as soon as the dancing was about to start, the onsite house manager (a different one from the previous day) said we were not allowed to have any of the doors open at all, and would text Iris about it, who of course said we never agreed to having any doors open, then changed and said it was only allowed until 8pm, which was never mentioned to me. Our coordinator, my wife, and I tried getting in touch with Iris days before the wedding, the day of the wedding, and the only person she would talk to was the house manager via text while we were trying to get the doors situation handled. It is amazing how many times Iris could ignore us and then lie to us on the rare occasion she actually spoke to us. My wife and I honestly feel the wedding planning process and our actual wedding would have been perfect if we had the chance to keep the original wedding date with the previous event manager. We had no issues with any other vendor, all of them were great, and MAGC was great until Iris stepped in, who I am still not sure is even a real person since she won’t meet with anyone in person. There are plenty of other things I want to mention, but I would be much past the character limit! Good luck getting any accurate information from her if you are trying to have a wedding...

Spring is a perfect time to attend a cooking class - the masterful hospitality of Kiah Bosy's 'Pasta from the Garden' class featured a healthy mix of wild and cultivated spicy herbs excellent for detoxing and renewing the body. We sampled many kinds of herbs, exotic salts, and olive oils from around the world. We built and enjoyed a beautiful, multi-layered feast on the edge of the garden. I love arboretums, and the outdoor kitchen/classroom is surrounded by magnolia, dogwood, and guava trees that were heavy with flowers. The velvety white guava flower bloom taste like strawberries. I was very impressed with Kiah Bosy's remarkable hospitality and culinary insights - she was exquisitely prepared and spared no expense on her selection of ingredients to share with...

Marin Art and Garden Center is steeped with history of Marin. In the sixties MAGC was the home if the country garden show which was also the Country Fair then. Beautifully decorated every year, it was fun to look at all the different ways flowers and yard "art" (elaborate bird baths, streams, small trees, bushes, flowers) would go together. Picking in the same town as the show, we're are there every day. If you go there you will find the oldest and biggest Magnolia tree in the center. The antiques store is packed with wonderful treasures that you can own. The Ross Vallet Players have there hope stage and there is always a show to go to. Take some time, stop by and take a walk through this old park that has quite a...