Things to do in Fresno

Landmark · North-west Fresno, off Shaw Avenue

Ten acres of courtyards, grottoes, passages and planting chambers dug by hand into the hardpan by a Sicilian immigrant between 1906 and the 1940s, with citrus trees growing up through skylights towards the surface.

Local tip: It is the strangest and best thing in Fresno and almost nobody outside the city knows it exists. Baldassare Forestiere dug it to escape the Valley heat, and the temperature difference underground on a 40°C afternoon makes the whole point of it obvious in about four seconds. Tours only, and they sell out in summer — book.

Neighborhood · Olive and Wishon Avenues, north of downtown

Fresno's 1920s streetcar neighbourhood around the art deco Tower Theatre — the city's restaurant, bar, live music and independent cinema quarter, with bungalows and Spanish revival houses on the streets behind.

Local tip: This is the one part of Fresno that works on foot, and it is where most people who move here without children end up first. The Tower Theatre's neon is the city's best-known image. Go on a Thursday evening rather than a Saturday, when it belongs to the neighbourhood rather than the whole county.

Nature · North Fresno, above the San Joaquin River bluffs

Three hundred acres on the river bluffs with a Japanese friendship garden, a lake, trails down into the San Joaquin River Parkway and the best running in the city.

Local tip: Go early — in July the only civilised hours outdoors are before nine and after eight. The Shinzen garden's cherry blossom in March is the local spring event, and the river parkway below the park is a genuinely wild ribbon that most Fresno residents have never walked.

Nature · A signed loop east and south of Fresno through Sanger, Reedley and Fowler

A driving route through the orchards in late February and March, when plum, almond, peach, nectarine and apple blossom comes out across tens of thousands of acres at once.

Local tip: This is the single best argument for living in the Valley and it lasts about three weeks. Drive it on a weekday morning, take the small roads rather than the highways, and stop at the fruit stands. Fresno County's agricultural office publishes the bloom timing each year — the window moves.

Culture · Van Ness Boulevard, Old Fig Garden

Two miles of deodar cedars along a boulevard of 1920s and 30s houses, lit every December since 1920 — one of the oldest large-scale Christmas light displays in the United States.

Local tip: Walk nights are the point: on designated evenings the road closes to cars and the whole neighbourhood goes on foot, which is a completely different experience from queuing through it in a car. Old Fig Garden itself is worth seeing in daylight too — an unincorporated pocket of large lots and mature trees inside the city.

Nature · An hour to two and a half hours east on the 41 and the 180

Three of the great national parks of the American west, all within a morning's drive: Yosemite Valley up the 41, and Kings Canyon and Sequoia — the biggest trees on earth — straight up the 180.

Local tip: This is the reason a lot of people put up with the Valley, and the proximity is genuinely unusual: you can be among the sequoias before lunch and home for dinner. Go up in July when Fresno is at 40°C and the parks are at 2,000 metres. Check road status in winter — the 180 into Kings Canyon closes seasonally.