The Cascade garden

In the western part of the Memorial Gardens, near the mausoleum of Baron Rothschild and his wife, is the Cascade garden. The structure and location of the garden impart a magical, unique atmosphere. In its upper section is an observation point providing spectacular views of the green woodlands of the Nature Park, the Carmel coastline and the Mediterranean Sea.
We recommend you begin your visit to the cascade garden in its upper section. There you will find a relief map of Israel made of stone. On this map, the names of the 44 settlements established and supported by Baron Rothschild are engraved. Some are named after his family members.
These names are evidence of the Baron’s strong emotional connection to settlement in Eretz Yisrael. For example, the town Zikhron Ya’akov is named after his father Ya’akov-James, Meir Shfeya, after his grandfather Mayer Amschel, and Givat Ada, after his wife Ada-Adelaide
The map of the settlements to a great extent shaped the borders of the country that was established on the basis of the settlements.

When designing the cascade garden, the architects, Oren Weinberg and Uriel Schiller, who designed the Memorial Gardens, integrated the contrast between the landscape of mountains leading down to the sea and the delineation created by the stone, in the terraces leading down to the pond. Construction with hard rock as opposed to soft vegetation, the stream of running water as opposed to the Canary Islands dragon tree that originates from desert regions.

Shrubs of the Canary Island dragon tree – a tree-like monocotyledonous plant from the Agavaceae family, accompany the descending steps of the cascade garden.

On the edge of the stone pond is a unique sculptured structure: two hands with water flowing between them. These symbolize our desire to hold onto life and the fact that the flowing water provides life but we cannot hold onto it forever. The stone sculptures and reliefs in the Memorial Gardens were created by two sculptors – Rhoda and Israel Traub, originally from South Africa, who settled in Zikhron Ya’akov.