Managed by a board of directors, the Berry estate had an area of 6.5 acres (26,000 m2), and contained the largest public rock garden on the West Coast.

[4] The garden began in the 1930s as the personal collection of Rae Selling Berry (1881–1976), who obtained seeds from plant explorers including Frank Kingdon-Ward, Francis Ludlow and George Sherriff, and Joseph Rock.

For more than 30 years, the couple and their three children lived in northeast Portland's Irvington neighborhood, where Berry developed an interest in plants.

By the mid-1930s, Berry had run out of room for her plants in Irvington, and the couple moved to "a bowl-shaped site nestled near the top of a hill".

[2] The property, just north of Lake Oswego, included springs and creeks, a ravine, a meadow, and a cattail marsh, and was partly covered with second-growth Douglas-fir.

[1] In January 2010, The Friends, citing financial problems, decided to sell the garden but to preserve the conservation program with help from Portland State University (PSU).

Keeping the most delicate specimens in cold frames or in log beds behind the house, Berry expanded her collection through exchanges with other gardeners, her own expeditions, and from plant explorers in Asia.

Many of the seeds, acquired from plant explorers in Asia, began their lives on the Berry family's prior home in Irvington and were transplanted to the garden.

[2] Lilies made up a fifth major collection started in 1979 when the garden's board of directors decided to provide sanctuary for many species of the genus Lilium found in the wild in the Northwest and along the West Coast.