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Blake Garden is a teaching facility for the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design in the hills of Kensington, California, a census designated place of the East Bay region of the Bay Area in Northern California, approximately north of the main University of California, Berkeley campus. It was originally designed by landscape architect Mabel Symmes for the estate owned by her sister and brother in law, Anita and Anson Blake; the trio lived in Blake House, a mansion on the estate designed by architect Walter Danforth Bliss and completed in 1924. The Blakes deeded the grounds to their alma mater, the University of California, in 1957, which took full control after Anita's death in 1962, implementing a redesign by Geraldine Knight Scott starting from 1964. Blake House served as the official residence of the President of the University of California from 1967 to 2008. Since 2009, Blake Garden has been open to the public on weekdays.

In Berkeley (before Kensington). One of the original trustees of the University of California, Anson Gale Stiles, purchased land on Piedmont Avenue, east of the present day Berkeley campus in the late 1860s. Anson's Piedmont house was completed in 1895. Anson ultimately left the property to his daughter, Harriet Waters Stiles (1840–1928). Additionally, two of Harriet's sons, Anson Stiles Blake (1870–1959) and Edwin Tyler Blake (1875–1949), would later build homes and gardens on this same property. In Kensington. When the Stiles/Blake family land on Piedmont was later purchased by the university in 1922 to build Memorial Stadium, the families relocated to a site in Kensington, encompassing where Blake Garden is today. The site was owned by Harriet who divided the land evenly between her four children: Eliza; Robert; Edwin; and Anson. Two of those children Eliza Seely Blake Thatcher (1872–1944), and Robert Pierpont Blake (1886–1950) lived outside the Bay Area and sold their shares to developers. The two other siblings, Anson and Edwin Blake, built two homes on the property in the Kensington hills. Anson Blake's house was completed in 1925, and is also known as La Casa Adelante. Edwin Blake's house is also known as Quinta de La Lilas. The widowed Harriet would live with Edwin, while Anson's sister in law, Mabel Symmes (1875–1962), would live with Anson and Anita (1872–1962), his wife and Mabel's sister. Anita and Mabel transplanted much of the Piedmont garden to the new Kensington site, taking four months and thirty truckloads to do so. Title on the site passed to the university upon the deaths of Anita Blake and her sister Mabel Symmes in 1962. Geraldine Knight Scott was appointed director of Blake Garden and began preparing the site for public visitation by clearing overgrown foliage and creating an influential Long Range Development Plan in 1964. For a "brief and unsatisfactory" time from 1962 to 1964,

The President of the University of California had traditionally lived in President's House, a residence on the Berkeley campus; when Clark Kerr was promoted from the Chancellor of Berkeley to UC president, he continued to live in his own private residence, and had President's House remodeled into University House to hold official events. University House would become the Berkeley chancellor's residence in 1965, when Roger W. Heyns moved into the house. In 1967, Charles Hitch succeeded Kerr as UC president and selected Blake House as his residence; it would continue to serve as the residence for the University of California president from 1967 to 2008. Hitch moved into the residence in April 1969, following a $459000 refurbishment paid through private donations. Improvements were designed by the architects Ron and Myra Brocchini, and upgrades to the grounds were designed by Scott to increase security and privacy while maintaining public access, including the stucco wall and fencing east of Blake House. Russell Beatty succeeded Scott as the director of Blake Garden in 1967, implementing a new mission as an "outdoor laboratory" for student projects in landscape architecture. In addition, the Children's Adventure Garden and Playground was built in 1970, spearheaded by Walter Doty, and ran for three years, with children responsible for tending plants under the guidance of Berkeley students. Under Beatty, the Cut Flower Garden was created in 1973 and a bouquet was delivered daily to the House. Nevertheless, Gardner used Blake House for official events and as an off campus presidential office. although a few events continued to be held at Blake House. The chair of the Regents of the University of California, Russell Gould, described the mansion as having "great bones, but it is a money pit." In 2013, incoming UC president Janet Napolitano rented a house in Oakland as her presidential residence; at the time, Blake House was called "stately, but run down" and it was estimated that required renovations could cost up to US$6 million, compared to the US$100,000 annual cost of renting a suitable house. The Seldon Williams House, a historic residence at 2821 Clairemont Blvd, designed by Julia Morgan and completed in 1928, was purchased for the UC president in 2021; according to a news release describing that acquisition, "UC's former official presidential residence, Blake House in Kensington, has been uninhabitable for more than a decade because of extensive — and cost prohibitive — deferred maintenance, in addition to significant seismic risks and landslide hazards. The university plans to sell this property at an appropriate time, with proceeds going to UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design." The upper garden is crossed by the Hayward Fault, which runs through Kensington parallel to Arlington Avenue, and the site is part of an area considered "highly susceptible to movement" as a potential site of a future major earthquake.