Sherman Gardens Renovation in Corona del Mar: What to Expect

Walk past 2647 East Coast Highway this month and the first thing you'll notice is that the gate isn't where it used to be. For as long as most Corona del Mar residents can remember, you entered Sherman Library & Gardens off Pacific Coast Highway. Now the entrance sits around the corner on Dahlia Avenue, marked with temporary signage, while a section of the 2.2-acre grounds stays fenced behind construction mesh. If you've assumed this is a short-term inconvenience before things go back to normal, there's a detail buried in Sherman's own announcements that changes that assumption. The restaurant that used to anchor the gardens isn't reopening once the dust settles. It's being replaced by something that doesn't exist yet.

The Corner of Dahlia and What's Missing

Sherman Library & Gardens turns 60 this year, and the nonprofit picked its anniversary to launch the largest physical transformation in its history: a $17 million revitalization that broke ground on February 26, 2026. That project follows a capital campaign, Grow the Gardens, that the foundation launched back in 2022 to fund exactly this kind of work. According to the American Public Gardens Association, the project is expected to wrap around the middle of 2027.

None of this has closed the gardens to the public. Regular hours are unchanged, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week, and general admission is still five dollars a person. What has changed is the layout. Sections of the grounds are fenced off for what Sherman describes as a reimagined entrance and garden areas, so the full collection of rooms and exhibits longtime visitors remember from past years isn't currently accessible in one visit.

The Restaurant Isn't Paused, It's Being Replaced

Here's the part that catches people off guard. For years, the restaurant tucked inside the gardens was 608 Dahlia, run by chef Jessica Roy. Roy had a long history at that address. She worked under chef Pascal Olhats at his restaurant Café Jardin on the same site, took over when Olhats retired in 2021, briefly ran it as Cultivar, then renamed it 608 Dahlia after its own street address. Her lease at Sherman concluded on October 26, 2025, and her final lunch service that Sunday closed out a run that had built a genuine local following for garden-to-table lunches and private events.

Roy didn't retire. She's since opened a new restaurant up the coast in Sunset Beach called 608 Sunset, in a renovated space that was formerly a gas station, carrying forward the same garden-forward Southern California style she built at Sherman.

What she didn't do is leave a restaurant behind that's simply waiting for construction to finish. Sherman's own website is direct about this: regular dining services are not currently available on site, and the gardens have announced a new restaurant partner for what they describe as a totally reimagined farm-to-table concept, targeted to open in fall 2027. That's a different operator building a different concept, not 608 Dahlia picking back up where it left off. If your mental model has been "the café is closed for renovations," the more accurate read is that the café you knew is gone for good, and whatever replaces it is still close to two years out.

What You Can Still Do Between Now and Then

The gap in dining doesn't mean there's nothing to do inside the fence line. The whimsical Dog Days of Sherman dog sculptures that had been scattered through the grounds wrapped their run on September 7, but the newest exhibit, Inspired By Nature, is up now if you want a reason to walk the sections that are still open. The gardens have also been running Hazeltine's Afternoon Tea experiences throughout 2026 as a stand-in for the full dining service the old restaurant used to offer, which is worth booking if you want an actual reason to spend an afternoon there rather than a quick walk-through.

For residents who've treated Sherman Gardens as a quiet, reliable pocket of green a few blocks off PCH, the exhibits and tea service are really the only programming carrying that role right now. The koi pond, the succulent garden, and the early California architecture that gives the place its character are all still there. What's temporarily missing is the sit-down lunch that used to make it easy to turn a garden visit into a half-day outing.

Keep These Fall Closure Dates in Mind

If you're a member, or you've got out-of-town guests who want to see the gardens on a specific weekend this fall, note that the gardens were closed to the public on Sunday, September 13, and will close again on Sunday, October 18. In between, on Saturday, October 3, the grounds close for the 2nd Annual Botanical Ball, a ticketed fundraiser rather than a public visiting day. None of these are construction closures. They're programmed dark days, and Sherman's own site flags them well in advance, which makes it easy to route around them if you're planning a visit.

Arnold Haskell spent more than a decade piecing together the block of Corona del Mar lots that became this garden, adding a wing to his own property and buying up the parcels around it until he owned the entire block by 1967. The version of Sherman Gardens that opens in 2027 won't look identical to the one longtime residents grew up walking through, and the restaurant that anchored so many of their memories there won't be walking back through that gate either. What's replacing it is still being built, both literally and as a concept, and the timeline on Sherman's own site suggests patience is the more realistic plan than waiting for 608 Dahlia's old tables to reappear.

For now, the gardens are still open, the koi are still there, and the tea service is a reasonable stand-in for a proper lunch. Just don't plan your afternoon around a restaurant that, at least for the next year, doesn't exist anymore.

If you're weighing a move to Corona del Mar and want the kind of on-the-ground read on the neighborhood that goes beyond listing photos, Mahlia Rittenhouse has spent years watching how this community changes block by block. Let's Connect.