A Thanks for This Visitor Experience

“It’s going to be a good day!” Natasha Vengrinovich announced yesterday morning, grey skies and drizzle notwithstanding. With her big smile and open manner, she seemed to be one of those cheery people for whom everyday is a good day.

Vengrinovich is visitor experience lead for the Gardens of Golden Gate Park, which partners with Rec and Park to co-manage the Japanese Tea Garden, Conservatory of Flowers, and the Botanical Garden. It’s a job that seems to fall somewhere between greeter and guide, with responsibilities that include selling tickets, providing informal tours and offering tips on the nearest café.

But Vengrinovich, who spends her week rotating between the three locations, works to “make the job more than it is.” Knowing first-hand the power of these gardens, she tries to shape a visitor experience that helps others connect with it.

I came upon her at the entrance of the Tea Garden, an exuberant presence welcoming people as they came through gate. We began chatting. She said she’d been a visitor experience leader for two years. And how did you come to the job? I asked.

“Well, that’s a story,” she answered and invited me to take a walk. After all, she pointed out, the Tea Garden was made for strolling.

Vengrinovich by one of her favorite spots in the Tea Garden: a bench where she made a strong connection with a visiting family

“A few years ago, I was living in New York City,” she said. She was married and was working with a tech company. The job paid extremely well and she was very good at it. “Then the pandemic hit.” She found herself trapped in an apartment in a “decrepitating marriage” staring at a computer screen all day.

She was sad and certain that her life needed to change, starting with leaving her husband. So, she packed up her stuff, put it in storage, and headed back to the Bay area – she’d grown up in Fremont – and continued to work remotely, even though it meant aligning her days with New York time. She told herself “I’m going to wake up at 6 AM until I can’t. And then I couldn’t.”

She said she had felt like the flower in a poem by Anais Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. “

Vengrinovich had to blossom.

One day she was walking in the park. “I didn’t know where I was going. I felt aimless in life and sick.” She pushed through the doors of the Conservatory of Flowers. Surrounded by plant and flowers, she felt wrapped in calm. She went up to the person at the front desk and asked if they were hiring.

A week later, she heard back from the HR person at the Gardens who clearly was baffled by her application for the visitor experience position. They pointed out the pay would be much lower than her tech job and that she was way over-qualified considering she had not only a BA but also a master’s in public health. “I said I need to be with people. I need to be in nature. I just need to be.” She was hired.

Her parents thought she was crazy to leave a high-paying job to “work in garden selling tickets to people. I was like, I just have to go. I have to do something different.”

Since going to work at the gardens, she’s thrived in the same way a root-bound plant does when moved to a better-sized pot. “I’m different now. And that’s how I got here,” she said, wrapping up her story.

In her two years as visitor experience leader, she’s witnessed countless “touchstone” moments: marriage proposals; parents taking babies on their first outings; elders revisiting a place they knew as children and exclaiming it looks just the same. Just the week before, a man came in carrying a violin case and she encouraged him to open it up and play. She held his sheet music as the sounds of Bach filled the Tea Garden. “It’s unrelated to Japan, but it’s a moment, right?” she said. “It's the human connection that I feel like I'm trying to get to in some way.”

I asked her what had been the most amazing thing she’d seen working in the gardens.

She thought about the question for a little bit. “I just feel like I've seen a lot of humans at their most organic state, which is pure, unadulterated excitement about plants. I don't know how to describe it — you get very childlike. No matter what age you are, when you see a giant leaf, anybody, everybody immediately is like, Oh my God, WHAT?” she said. “I want there to be more things like that in the community, that people come to over and over and over again, because it brings them that sense of awe.”

One of her favorite interactions was with a family whose grandmother had been a regular visitor in the garden. She joined them as they meandered along the winding paths. When they got to one bench, the family suddenly realized it was the spot where the grandmother had always sat to look at the trees and the fish. They had scattered her ashes there. She asked them to tell her more about the woman. It turned out she was also named Natasha. The grandson told her he felt his grandmother had brought Vengrinovich to them that day. "It's possible,” she responded. To me, she added, “There’s definitely been spirits here.”

We talked about how the Garden is a source of comfort and solace for many people. Certainly, it’s been that for her. After the October 7 Hamas attack, Vengrinovich was reeling and grief-stricken. She made a point in the following days of wearing her Star of David necklace outside her jacket so any visitors who were Jewish or also mourning would know they were not alone. She’d put her hand up to the necklace as visitors came by. Whether or not they were wearing a Star of David, many would respond by also touching their hearts.