Kate Sessions and Balboa Park Gardens

um talk information on the website but i'll just go over it real quickly for those of you who might not have seen it um she's a frequent community speaker she researches and writes horticulture history and has published in several publications um pacific horticulture eden the journal of san diego history and california garden where she's the associate editor she um makes balboa park in the life and work of kate sessions special areas of research she serves on the board of the san diego floral association and the california garden and landscape history society and she's a long time member of mission hills garden club so we're so happy to have her here and she is going to take us on a trip with the history of kate sessions and how she uh went to other countries to bring new species of palms to the united states and to begin a specialty garden in balboa park but she's also going to tell us a lot more about some interesting facts about the gardens in balboa park that many of us don't know when i heard about when she told me what she was doing i didn't know about them so it's going to be very interesting and i hope you all enjoy it so uh nancy if you would like to um get started i'm going to share with you a screen are you did you yeah yes i see you now yes okay oh i forgot one more i just want to say nancy i'm so sorry before you begin um we are going to hold off questions and let um nancy finish her whole presentation um if you have some questions you're thinking about you can put them in the chat room at the end of the presentation we'll go through as many as we can um and have her answer questions then so with that i will um turn it over to nancy are you seeing my screen yes i see you take a parade well good evening everyone and thanks for your interest in kate sessions and balboa park tonight i have a story of three specialty gardens in balboa park that have kate sessions green fingerprints all over them even though her connection to these gardens is not well known as hinted at by this introductory page one of the gardens is full of palms one features aloes of agaves and one is a cactus garden kate sessions had a special interest and fascination with these plants although she called agaves savage and cactus pugnacious first i'd like to clarify the role of kate sessions in balboa park's development there's a lot of misinformation on this point but most of us are familiar with the story of how kate sessions leased 32 acres of the undeveloped park in 1892 she operated her plant nursery business on this park land and she paid for this lease of public land by planting at least 100 trees per year in the park and providing the city with an additional 300 trees for other uses this lease arrangement continued for 10 years meaning that sessions planted more than 1 000 trees in the park at the end of 1902 she relocated out of the park establishing her nursery business in mission hills after 1902 kate sessions never again had any official control of balboa park land or any official role in landscaping the park she was not a landscape architect who developed the whole park as you might read in some inaccurate sources but kate sessions was a highly respected voice in san diego and a lifelong advocate for balboa park her ideas carried a lot of weight and she did influence part development this explains her connection with the three specialty gardens we'll talk about tonight the once magnificent kate oh sessions aloe and agave garden is lost it has been gone for 50 years a lot of confusion and even some mysteries surround this balboa park garden over the years it's been mixed up with the desert garden that we have today and also with the cactus garden we have not even known exactly where the aloe and agave garden was located within the park so i've had a lot of fun over the past pandemic months unraveling the full story of this garden and its balboa park location the story of this garden begins in 1931. sessions suffered a serious illness that year and also her brother frank died her only sibling the exact nature of kate's illness remains undescribed but she was hospitalized and she had surgery she apparently was in a very bad way i don't know if this picture was taken in 1931 but this is the picture of kate in which she looks the frailest and the illest so i have a feeling this picture does date to that period of time before she died she actually looked much healthier than this well when kate sessions was suffering this serious illness san diego panicked sessions was 74 years old and it appeared that she might be on her deathbed there was suddenly a lot of civic hand-wringing had this wonderful citizen received in life the accolades that would surely be heaped upon her in death had san diego done enough to celebrate and reward the great great kate sessions well in answer to these concerns plans were quickly made for a large community dinner to be held in session's honor as soon as she was well enough lots of important people would give speeches that lauded her contributions to the community as soon as kate sessions got wind of this plan she vetoed the idea she suggested instead that an allo and agave garden be built in balboa park this is what would make her happy she said and it would be a notable enhancement of the park and would become a san diego attraction bringing in tourists just like the desert garden at the huntington estate in san marino the public was told about this plan in a splashy newspaper feature in march 1932 this collage of kate sessions pictures dominated the first page of the home and garden section of the newspaper the following pages carried an in-depth article on sessions life and an announcement of the new aloe and agave garden it was also reported that sessions was recovering from her illness in this collage the first flower shop flora shop she operated in downtown san diego on fifth avenue is shown and this photo of sessions was taken just a couple of years before she came to san diego in 1884 and another part of the collage shows her own garden this is kate sessions garden i don't know who these visitors to the garden are and this pretty well-known picture of sessions standing in front of a blooming acacia and this was sessions home that she built in 1928 on los altos drive in pacific beach not far from today's kate sessions park the san diego floral association took up the challenge of creating the new garden and they had the perfect person to be in charge mrs greer a long-term president of the organization was a dynamo who knew how to get things done and she also worked with chauncey jerobeck who was active in the floral association he loved and respected kate sessions and he was a balboa park horticulturalist who led the practical work of establishing the garden he also documented the contents of the garden as it grew maintaining a meticulous record of the aloes and agaves and researching species that were needed to complete the collection he's reading about plants from the bible by the way in this picture of course the first step was getting permission to establish a new garden within balboa park john morley was the superintendent of parks and had known and worked with sessions since his san diego arrival in 1911. he helped win city approval and assigned a plot of land for the garden once the garden had official approval sessions in gerabec sought contributions of plants and expert advice a cameo role in the creation of this garden was played by william hurtridge another pal of kate sessions and the creator of the gardens on the huntington estate he donated many rare plants and provided advice on the layout of the garden other donations came in from all over san diego california and the southwest sessions donated her entire personal collection of aloes and agaves i mentioned the confusion that has always surrounded the history of this lost garden there are few photos or descriptions of it and one of the open questions has been exactly where the garden was located in my recent research i was thrilled to find an aerial photograph from 1936 that answers that question the garden was this large triangular shape it ran about 340 feet on its widest side these are all cars parked around here because the exposition was going on and these twin roads that came down on each side of the garden uh joined together and traveled on down to the floor of florida canyon this was the electric railway that ran through balboa park the garden was always described as being on the east side of park boulevard and in this photo here is park boulevard the zoo is off in this direction this building no longer exists but this road now runs through and this is village place right here and over here just a little bit further away would be the large morton bay fig tree in the park now the problem with this description that um the garden was on the east side of park boulevard is the fact that park boulevard is now in a completely different place and i certainly never realized how far park boulevard was moved when it was rebuilt as a four-lane thoroughfare in 1966. on this map i'm showing the original route of park boulevard and the approximate route of park boulevard today and so as you can see on this map the garden is now on the west side of park boulevard so no wonder there was so much confusion over this uh location of this garden here's one more map uh the gold the orange star is the garden itself here we have spanish village zoo is off in this direction and uh so the blue is the original route of park boulevard and the green is the park boulevard today and on this map you can see the relationship of our current desert garden which was created in 1976 it's right over here on the east side of park boulevard you can see its location in relation to where the original aloe and agave garden was located by 1934 the garden was becoming well established the floral association had sponsored two fundraising events in support of the garden while jerabek and sessions were still aggressively seeking species that were not represented in the alawin agave collection on march 23rd 1935 the garden was presented by the floral association to the city of san diego it was dedicated and officially named the kate o sessions aloe and agave garden a bronze dedication plaque was affixed to one of the large granite boulders that had been brought into the garden and in this picture you can see kate sessions sitting on this stone bench in the garden and this back here is that electric railway that ran through the park and that is the approximate location of um of park boulevard today well after this dedication the alan agave garden dropped out of the news and other written sources there was an occasional report of praise for the garden by a visiting horticulturalist and there was one newspaper article in 1938 when an agave eteniada shot up its spectacular bloom this plant is so common in san diego now but it was new and unusual in the 1930s kate says sessions claimed that the one in the allo and agave garden that bloomed in 1938 was the first to bloom in san diego the few other stories written about the alaw and agave garden sadly record its neglect and decline san diego does not adequately staff balboa park today and it did not do so in earlier times there simply was not the care given to the specialty garden that it needed decades passed and despite inadequate maintenance some sturdy aloe and agave plants persisted in the garden proving kate sessions point that these are hearty and useful plants for san diego they will survive on neglect but when a master plan for balboa park was commissioned in 1960 the garden was doomed the bartholomew plan described the aloe and agave garden as unmaintained and called for its abandonment the planners suggested that any worthy plants be moved to the cactus garden a few years later in the mid-1960s the garden was negatively impacted during the massive project of relocating and realigning park boulevard the alawin agave garden in 1971 was then completely destroyed when the land upon which it stood was paved over to create the spanish village parking lot we do not know if any of the aloe and agave plants were saved or relocated or if they were unceremoniously plowed under by a bulldozer we do know that one of the most botanically important specialty gardens and one of the best documented plant collections ever established in balboa park was neglected to death and we also know that a heartfelt community tribute to kate sessions lost out in the mounting pressure of the automobile in decisions about land use in balboa park a parking lot was deemed more important than the historic garden it replaced another garden that kate sessions brought to balboa park is the cactus garden and like the alawin agave garden it was magnificent when created then suffered decades of neglect and vandalism i almost called it a lost garden because it was forgotten and neglected for so many years but i think we can now say that it has been found because of a recent revitalization project that i'll discuss in a minute kate sessions lobbied and cajoled for many years before she saw the realization of her dream of a world-class cactus garden in balboa park she's on the record as first mentioning the idea in 1899 over the years she kept the idea alive with articles and in her talks to various groups in 1918 she made the point that san diego could become a world-class could become a world cactus center a place for the study of cactus because we had such ideal growing conditions for them in 1926 she said that san diego and balboa park could have the best cactus garden in the world and she urged someone to take up the cause and become and become the point person for this project in 1934 spoiler alert she finally found some success for her idea when it was announced in 1934 that balboa park would host the california pacific international exposition kate sessions saw her chance and she turned off the heat it took a lot of persuasion but she won support for a new cactus garden to be part of the exposition to create the garden kate was once again working with her friends john morley and chauncey jarabek but the new player was richard requa who was the architect in charge of the 1935 exposition he apparently was something of a tough sell but once he approved the garden and assigned it a location he was not closely involved the 1935 exposition was thrown together in record time and recall was plenty busy with other projects this map shows the additional buildings added by the 1935 exposition in what is called the palisades area of balboa park so to oh let me go back so to orient you here is the cabrillo bridge here's the plaza to panama the organ pavilion and these buildings are the buildings that were added to balboa park for the 1935 exposition i have enlarged this map so that you can see i'm sorry my computer is skipping on me i've enlarged this map so that you can see uh this first representation of this first rendering of the cactus garden in a balboa park map so here's the cactus garden oh man here we go here's the cactus garden i when i first saw this i thought it reminded me something of a drawing of a brain but this is the cactus garden as shown on the 1935 exposition map and i believe this is the first official rendering of the garden on a balboa park map now the garden was assigned a place behind this building which was actually left over from the 1915 exposition this was the new mexico building and if we're 1935 it was renovated and became the palace of education and of course today we know it as the balboa park club here's a nice aerial shot of the palisades area so air and space museum auto museum municipal gym this plaza that's currently under renovation and now it was entirely a parking lot and now half of it is a beautifully landscaped usable area and over here we have the balboa park club and the cactus garden and here's the close-up i believe the reason this stands out so much in these aerial photographs is because white sand dressing was used in the cactus garden that was really something of a fashionable way to display cactus at the time and here's a ground level picture of just one part of the garden after chauncey darabak had gotten it planted and just to give you a sense of the size of some of these plants and just the whole location here are some visitors right here and of course what's charming in this picture is the view of the cabrillo bridge so at last after 36 years of advocacy kate sessions did get to see and savor a magnificent cactus garden in balboa park again this garden was filled with donations from many local people including kate sessions own cactus collection but cactus growers across the state and as far away as texas and oklahoma sent plants this was the power of kate sessions and her her reputation in the horticultural world people wanted to contribute to this garden the most significant donation came from the federated garden clubs of arizona working with the university of arizona they shipped an astounding 15 tons of cactus and desert plants to san diego and they sent along a university employee as the expert to help plant the arizona donations the donation included 20 giant saguerros one twelve feet tall exposition postcards captured the exotic cactus garden and the display was featured in the exposition guidebook and it garnered some local press coverage later the cactus garden was recognized as one of the top three permanent landscape improvements to the park that resulted from the 1935 exposition but like the aloe and agave garden the cactus garden generated very little long-term interest almost nothing was written about the garden for decades and it was poorly maintained and badly vandalized over many years the master planners for the park did think the garden was worth saving and in 1960 recommended that it be better protected and that it received notable plants from the doomed aloe and agave garden i thought it was interesting in this master plan to see that they also recommended demolishing the palace of education our balboa park club obviously that was not done and on that location there was going to be picnic grounds overlooking the cactus garden that didn't happen carol greentree a san diego landscape historian whose name may be familiar to many of you wrote one of the few articles on the cactus garden in 1998 she compared the garden to a ghost town meaning that it was deserted and abandoned yet she pointed out that even in an overall picture of neglect some plants in the cactus garden were flourishing in ghost gardens she said the unintended relics of a once fine planting can be a proving ground for survival plants ghost gardens she said tell us which plants are sustainable a recent intervention by the balboa park conservancy has been the salvation of the cactus garden much of the work in the garden was made possible by a very generous donation from one of our mission hills neighbors the work is ongoing but the cactus garden is in better condition today than it has been in many years the conservancy is also rolling out its program of new park signage this year there is a plan to provide better directional signs so that visitors can find this somewhat hidden garden the cactus garden is sometimes called the old cactus garden the 1935 cactus garden or even the cabrillo canyon cactus garden i have proposed that the cactus garden be formally formerly renamed after kate sessions and that is being discussed but renaming anything in the park is very complicated so we will have to wait and see if a sign like this one ever appears meanwhile the rehabilitated cactus garden seems to be rediscovered and is enjoying a new popularity for photo shoots the oldest balboa park garden directly connected with sessions is the san jose hesper palm garden dating to 1914. this plantation of palms has never been recognized as a garden of balboa park it is not on any park map few people know that these palms are closely connected to kate sessions and that she is in fact responsible for this mass planning that's why i call this collection of palms a lost kate sessions garden almost no one knows about it kate sessions worked directly with john marley in creating this garden but as you will hear ts brandeigh a famous botanist who specialized in mexican plants was very much a part of the story gosh sorry the history of this garden begins in 1902 when kate sessions joined the brandeighs on a plant hunting expedition to the tip of baja california the explorers boarded a coastal steamship in ensenada for the four day trip to san jose del cabo then they rode mules for three days to reach a mountainous area where a special palm was growing this palm was believed to be new to science meaning that it had not been botanically classified or named the palm had never been imported to the united states in the right hand photo t.s brandeigh is sitting under a tree in baja and on the left is his wife dr catherine brandiche i wish this were a picture of kate sessions but there isn't one of her on this trip dr brandigee was photographed on an earlier baja expedition the brandeighs were two of the most respected botanists in the late 1800s and were definitely the nation's most renowned botanical couple when they moved to san diego in 1894 they of course became friends with kate sessions also important to this story is the illustrious or notorious german plant collector carl purpose from the americas and particularly from mexico he extracted and shipped tons and tons of plant material to europe where botanical gardens and private collectors had an early fascination with succulent plants it was carl purpose who determined that the palm was indeed a new species he published the first botanical description of the palm in a science journal and named it after mr brandiche with the common name san jose hesper palm from the mexico expedition kate sessions returned to san diego with small palms and bags and bags of palm seed then on her growing grounds near stevenson lewis street in mission hills she propagated hundreds of the new palms growing this plant species for the first time in the united states a grove of these small trees was later planted in balboa park this is what sessions wrote about the trip and the planting of the san jose hesper palms i dug from the field five small palms and brought them to san diego later a few thousand seeds were planted in 1914 325 were planted in balboa park just outside the rose garden of these 325 the park bought 175 and i donated 150 this group was planted in honor of mr and mrs brandigy well it might be confusing for us today to hear that the palms were planted near the balboa park rose garden because if you think about it there is no big palm grove near the rose garden but kate sessions is referring to the first roast garden in balboa park not the one we know today as you can tell from this old postcard the first rose garden was on the west side of the park it was planted before the 1915 exposition the cabrillo bridge helps us envision the location the garden was near the laurel street entrance and the approximate location of today's bowling greens in this photo the palm plantation is clearly visible on the northeast side of the bowling greens there's an assortment of palm species on view in this photograph but kate sessions san jose hesper palms extend down the side of cabrillo canyon and dominate this 1914 plantation and here's an aerial view taken from the balboa park tree inventory these not very green spaces are the bowling greens and each of the colored dots represents a tree the dark purple dots are san jose hesper palms in the inventory 188 palms were still growing in this area here are some recent photographs of the san jose hesper palm garden in balboa park the san jose hesper palm is still somewhat rare in the united states it's similar to the widely used washingtonia robusta the san jose hester palm is tall and has a very long life its slender trunk is one of its distinguishing features it's possible to stand amid these tall san jose hesper palms and look over to the kate sessions statue at the park entrance yet this is a forgotten and overlooked garden almost no one knows that there's a direct connection between the bronze woman standing at the park entrance and this one of a kind palm garden this garden is historically important because it represents the success of kate sessions only plant hunting expedition and it proclaims her talent as a propagator the garden is unique in the world and holds the largest collection of san jose palms in the united states therefore i have a proposal i think this garden should be recognized as the ko session san jose hesper palm garden directional and interpretive signage should tell the story of this garden and the connection to both sessions and the famous brandeighs just like every other garden in balboa park this one should be included on maps and in guides well i'd like to close this story with some additional information about the brandeighs who were so important to the san jose hesper palm story these remarkable botanists added a wealth of information on the plants of california and mexico to the botanical record they spent months of their lives hiking and camping in remote remote locations to study plants catherine brandigee was once in a shipwreck off baja but managed to save her field notes and plant samples she broke her leg once in the high sierras and had to be packed out on a mule t s branded g wandered in the heat and barrenness of mexico for weeks at a time studying cactus the brandings elevated west coast botanical science with their exacting work and by publishing scores of scientific papers the mere presence of the brandiges brought distinction to san diego and their botanical expertise and connections in the plant world inspired kate sessions and the others who knew them the brandiges created san diego's first botanical garden and they built the largest private herbarium in the united states here are the types of herbarium sheets they prepared for botanical study when their collection was given to uc berkeley the size of the university herbarium was doubled when catherine and t s brandeigh came to san diego in night in 1894 they purchased property in bankers hill and they lived in a tent while building a brick structure for their books and herbarium they later expanded that building with living quarters here is the branded g house and herbarium on first avenue near redwood street take note of that tall chimney and unusual roof configuration on this bare piece of land the branded is created as already mentioned san diego's first botanical garden and here is catherine brandiche working in the garden with a house in the background sadly there are no remains of this once magnificent and important garden but you can connect with this history by visiting the brand g property in bankers hill and seeing the house where they lived it is not a museum you don't have to make reservations you won't even see the brand she named mentioned but their house is at the self-realization center on first avenue near redwood street you will see an irving gill building constructed when the bishop school had a campus on the former branded g property and behind it is the branded g house here it is recognizable by the tall chimney and roof configuration i hope you will all enjoy visiting this unsung historic site of the branded g home and garden in bankers hill as well as returning to balboa park to view the cactus garden and the san jose hesper palms with a new appreciation of their history and close connection to the life and work of kate sessions thank you so much for joining the program tonight and i'm going to be happy to take your questions thank you so much nancy i just wanted to say that it was great a lot of history i knew nothing about and i've been here all my life so i'm going to be walking through the park looking a little more closely um i i have the first question if you don't mind when you say they're revitalizing the cactus garden yes you revitalize do you talk about i mean are they watering is that well there are there are many many things that they've done uh i'm gonna wait let me stop sharing my screen so i come back into view uh there are many things that have been done um one of the things that was really important was that they rebuilt all the trails and the pathways that lead down to the garden and they put in new drainage and different ways of preserving the pathways they did work on the um irrigation systems you know all over the park there are these antique irrigation systems and no one knows where the pipes run and where the connections are so anytime they have to work on the irrigation systems it's really a major undertaking but they've done that they've also put in a lot of new plants and trimmed up and cleaned up the plants that are there and they invited uh nan sternman who came in and and did some beautiful um i think she focused mainly on these big pots that were kind of like introductory to the garden you know one of the things about the gardens location is it is a little bit hidden back behind the balboa part club and if you don't know that it's there you might not ever walk back there which is why this new signage is going to be so important but she uh created some beautiful big uh plantings in pots that kind of you know brought you into the garden but it but and they're continuing to work i don't know what all else they're doing but those were the major things that i think were needed right off the bat very good and real quick on the palm canyon uh garden are they what are they trimming those do they maintain that now or you know i i actually took out one of my slides so that i wouldn't go too long on this but one of the slides i showed how uh the garden really is those palms are not main they don't do anything as far as i can tell you know there are a lot of trees falling over and uh it and i i don't even mind that i mean it's kind of a very natural looking area and you know you can walk over and take a look but um one of the things that's interesting to me is uh i don't know how self-seeding those palms are you know to have i think to have 188 palms left there after 107 years it's kind of amazing but i don't know how many of them may be you know reseeded and their newer trees but uh no it is it's not maintained as a garden quote it's it and garden is probably i was just using the word because my title was kate sessions garden probably a better name for that would be a grove it's a palm beach okay okay great um i do have a question here for some from someone if you don't mind no do you know that the red sandstone's rocks in the cactus garden are signature cake sessions she used them frequently to denmark edge of her landscaping yes i do know that and if the person who submitted that information can help me find out about exactly where those rocks come from and what that rock formation is called i would be thrilled i have been trying to research those rocks i've read more geology articles on the web than i ever wanted to but i can't really nail down exactly where those rocks came from and what they are but i do know that she they are a signature of hers absolutely okay and another question um does recent book which you edited contains some of these stories about kate sessions i'm sorry what was the question the question says does recent book which you edited contains some of these stories about kate sessions well the book is kate sessions own writing so it does certainly have the articles i was referring to when i said you know like over the years she wrote these articles so the book is the complete writings of kate sessions as published in california garden magazine published by san diego floral association and the the four of us who worked on editing this we did add some things like there is a biographical statement about sessions there's a timeline of sessions life we did include a lot of photographs that are not commonly published of kate sessions but it's not it's not um third-party stories about her except for that content okay and another question um how do you feel about the fact that these plans are mostly not native to san diego uh well how do i feel about it i'm obviously glad we brought them here i i can't i don't envision uh san diego that's 100 native plants i think you know one of the great things about our climate is that we can grow so many different types of things and all of these plants are compatible with the low water requirements that we should respect in san diego so as long as something is um you know it's not invasive and it's not putting a strain on our water resources i have absolutely no objection to exotic plants yeah um and i the a comment back from about the red uh sandstone rocks it says they come from linda vista formation in kearny mesa and kate session has them noted in her field notes in san diego history center all right thank you and another question did kate sessions plant the palms on sunset boulevard oh wow i'm sure i don't know the answer to this but i don't you know i don't think so i think they were probably planted by whoever the developer was you know at the time that's really amazing but that i do not know the answer to that i'm sure i should um but i don't think i've ever read that she planted them okay another mystery to solve exactly [Laughter] anyone else have any i've just read all the questions that were there you there are a lot of uh wows and for your presentation and thank you thanks for being here with us and everyone is so from the other garden clubs are so um happy that they were able to join and we i certainly hope they'll come back for our next um programs anything else anybody oh okay palms on sunset boulevard are planted by miller family ron may is very knowledgeable about all that excellent oh thank you yes so um uh let's see thank you yeah someone said they'll be looking at balboa park with new eyes as i will walk around there but i need to look a little closer anyway thank you and thank you and thank you so much are we are we signing off here because i would i i'm happy to stay on this zoom for a few minutes if there are anybody else i'm waiting i don't see um any others yet that just thank yous now no other questions at this time because anyone has any now's the chance no i don't see any more okay i just want to say thank you that was a beautiful presentation made me want to go to the park and look for these gardens great thank you i'm from the poway garden club by the way oh well thanks for joining very much for your invitation oh great i'm glad you're here i want to add that our our mission hills garden walk is coming up may 8th and tickets will go on sale march 1st and we've got eight incredible gardens so i i hope that you will all join us on may 8th hey and keep yeah just go to our website for information um so any i don't see any oh are there any walking tours which review some of this content you know of course there are no walking tours right now because they're not doing that sort of thing during the pandemic but i'm trying to think um whether or not you know i don't think i think i have to say no because most of the walking tours don't make it over to the cactus garden because it's a little bit far for people to walk and um honestly most people don't know about the san jose hesper palms they just don't know the connection with kate sessions so i don't think so there are certainly general walking tours of balboa park and you will see there are garden tours where you will see other gardens and i know those will be resumed as soon as they're able to the conservancy is starting to do a lot of those tours because the park rangers no longer seem to have time to provide that service so the conservancy has been training new tour guides to do garden tours and other park tours and i'm sure that as soon as it's possible to start those they'll be advertising them again yeah and i just hope that they get some of those signs you were um proposing you know the signage that's going to go around that would be helpful i think that it really will be and you know i i don't know if i i didn't spend a lot of time on this but you're going to be seeing throughout balboa park new signage and it's such a it's going to be a great improvement over the current directional signage and wayfinding in the park so that's supposed to start happening this spring very good and one more i'm sorry do you have any suggestions for the desert garden future hmm what an interesting question well again i would just say maintenance and and i have to i do think the desert garden is fairly nicely maintained but you know that that is the biggest problem with these specialty gardens and not just in balboa park you know in any in any park the plants sometimes require special knowledge and maybe the park employees don't necessarily have that special knowledge and um but the larger problem is just shortages of staff to really devote the attention and time that these specialty gardens need but i would have to say i think overall the desert garden is pretty nicely maintained good okay i think that's it so thank you so much nancy we'll be seeing you again um that was great thank you you're welcome it's my pleasure goodbye everybody see you at our next meeting on when was it february 25th hopefully thank you good night

um talk information on the website but i&#39;ll just go over it real quickly for those of you who might not have seen it um she&#39;s a frequent community speaker she researches and writes horticulture history and has published in several publications um pacific horticulture eden the journal of san diego history and california garden where she&#39;s the associate editor she um makes balboa park in the life and work of kate sessions special areas of research she serves on the board of the san diego floral association and the california garden and landscape history society and she&#39;s a long time member of mission hills garden club so we&#39;re so happy to have her here and she is going to take us on a trip with the history of kate sessions and how she uh went to other countries to bring new species of palms to the united states and to begin a specialty garden in balboa park but she&#39;s also going to tell us a lot more about some interesting facts about the gardens in balboa park that many of us don&#39;t know when i heard about when she told me what she was doing i didn&#39;t know about them so it&#39;s going to be very interesting and i hope you all enjoy it so uh nancy if you would like to um get started i&#39;m going to share with you a screen are you did you yeah yes i see you now yes okay oh i forgot one more i just want to say nancy i&#39;m so sorry before you begin um we are going to hold off questions and let um nancy finish her whole presentation um if you have some questions you&#39;re thinking about you can put them in the chat room at the end of the presentation we&#39;ll go through as many as we can um and have her answer questions then so with that i will um turn it over to nancy are you seeing my screen yes i see you take a parade well good evening everyone and thanks for your interest in kate sessions and balboa park tonight i have a story of three specialty gardens in balboa park that have kate sessions green fingerprints all over them even though her connection to these gardens is not well known as hinted at by this introductory page one of the gardens is full of palms one features aloes of agaves and one is a cactus garden kate sessions had a special interest and fascination with these plants although she called agaves savage and cactus pugnacious first i&#39;d like to clarify the role of kate sessions in balboa park&#39;s development there&#39;s a lot of misinformation on this point but most of us are familiar with the story of how kate sessions leased 32 acres of the undeveloped park in 1892 she operated her plant nursery business on this park land and she paid for this lease of public land by planting at least 100 trees per year in the park and providing the city with an additional 300 trees for other uses this lease arrangement continued for 10 years meaning that sessions planted more than 1 000 trees in the park at the end of 1902 she relocated out of the park establishing her nursery business in mission hills after 1902 kate sessions never again had any official control of balboa park land or any official role in landscaping the park she was not a landscape architect who developed the whole park as you might read in some inaccurate sources but kate sessions was a highly respected voice in san diego and a lifelong advocate for balboa park her ideas carried a lot of weight and she did influence part development this explains her connection with the three specialty gardens we&#39;ll talk about tonight the once magnificent kate oh sessions aloe and agave garden is lost it has been gone for 50 years a lot of confusion and even some mysteries surround this balboa park garden over the years it&#39;s been mixed up with the desert garden that we have today and also with the cactus garden we have not even known exactly where the aloe and agave garden was located within the park so i&#39;ve had a lot of fun over the past pandemic months unraveling the full story of this garden and its balboa park location the story of this garden begins in 1931. sessions suffered a serious illness that year and also her brother frank died her only sibling the exact nature of kate&#39;s illness remains undescribed but she was hospitalized and she had surgery she apparently was in a very bad way i don&#39;t know if this picture was taken in 1931 but this is the picture of kate in which she looks the frailest and the illest so i have a feeling this picture does date to that period of time before she died she actually looked much healthier than this well when kate sessions was suffering this serious illness san diego panicked sessions was 74 years old and it appeared that she might be on her deathbed there was suddenly a lot of civic hand-wringing had this wonderful citizen received in life the accolades that would surely be heaped upon her in death had san diego done enough to celebrate and reward the great great kate sessions well in answer to these concerns plans were quickly made for a large community dinner to be held in session&#39;s honor as soon as she was well enough lots of important people would give speeches that lauded her contributions to the community as soon as kate sessions got wind of this plan she vetoed the idea she suggested instead that an allo and agave garden be built in balboa park this is what would make her happy she said and it would be a notable enhancement of the park and would become a san diego attraction bringing in tourists just like the desert garden at the huntington estate in san marino the public was told about this plan in a splashy newspaper feature in march 1932 this collage of kate sessions pictures dominated the first page of the home and garden section of the newspaper the following pages carried an in-depth article on sessions life and an announcement of the new aloe and agave garden it was also reported that sessions was recovering from her illness in this collage the first flower shop flora shop she operated in downtown san diego on fifth avenue is shown and this photo of sessions was taken just a couple of years before she came to san diego in 1884 and another part of the collage shows her own garden this is kate sessions garden i don&#39;t know who these visitors to the garden are and this pretty well-known picture of sessions standing in front of a blooming acacia and this was sessions home that she built in 1928 on los altos drive in pacific beach not far from today&#39;s kate sessions park the san diego floral association took up the challenge of creating the new garden and they had the perfect person to be in charge mrs greer a long-term president of the organization was a dynamo who knew how to get things done and she also worked with chauncey jerobeck who was active in the floral association he loved and respected kate sessions and he was a balboa park horticulturalist who led the practical work of establishing the garden he also documented the contents of the garden as it grew maintaining a meticulous record of the aloes and agaves and researching species that were needed to complete the collection he&#39;s reading about plants from the bible by the way in this picture of course the first step was getting permission to establish a new garden within balboa park john morley was the superintendent of parks and had known and worked with sessions since his san diego arrival in 1911. he helped win city approval and assigned a plot of land for the garden once the garden had official approval sessions in gerabec sought contributions of plants and expert advice a cameo role in the creation of this garden was played by william hurtridge another pal of kate sessions and the creator of the gardens on the huntington estate he donated many rare plants and provided advice on the layout of the garden other donations came in from all over san diego california and the southwest sessions donated her entire personal collection of aloes and agaves i mentioned the confusion that has always surrounded the history of this lost garden there are few photos or descriptions of it and one of the open questions has been exactly where the garden was located in my recent research i was thrilled to find an aerial photograph from 1936 that answers that question the garden was this large triangular shape it ran about 340 feet on its widest side these are all cars parked around here because the exposition was going on and these twin roads that came down on each side of the garden uh joined together and traveled on down to the floor of florida canyon this was the electric railway that ran through balboa park the garden was always described as being on the east side of park boulevard and in this photo here is park boulevard the zoo is off in this direction this building no longer exists but this road now runs through and this is village place right here and over here just a little bit further away would be the large morton bay fig tree in the park now the problem with this description that um the garden was on the east side of park boulevard is the fact that park boulevard is now in a completely different place and i certainly never realized how far park boulevard was moved when it was rebuilt as a four-lane thoroughfare in 1966. on this map i&#39;m showing the original route of park boulevard and the approximate route of park boulevard today and so as you can see on this map the garden is now on the west side of park boulevard so no wonder there was so much confusion over this uh location of this garden here&#39;s one more map uh the gold the orange star is the garden itself here we have spanish village zoo is off in this direction and uh so the blue is the original route of park boulevard and the green is the park boulevard today and on this map you can see the relationship of our current desert garden which was created in 1976 it&#39;s right over here on the east side of park boulevard you can see its location in relation to where the original aloe and agave garden was located by 1934 the garden was becoming well established the floral association had sponsored two fundraising events in support of the garden while jerabek and sessions were still aggressively seeking species that were not represented in the alawin agave collection on march 23rd 1935 the garden was presented by the floral association to the city of san diego it was dedicated and officially named the kate o sessions aloe and agave garden a bronze dedication plaque was affixed to one of the large granite boulders that had been brought into the garden and in this picture you can see kate sessions sitting on this stone bench in the garden and this back here is that electric railway that ran through the park and that is the approximate location of um of park boulevard today well after this dedication the alan agave garden dropped out of the news and other written sources there was an occasional report of praise for the garden by a visiting horticulturalist and there was one newspaper article in 1938 when an agave eteniada shot up its spectacular bloom this plant is so common in san diego now but it was new and unusual in the 1930s kate says sessions claimed that the one in the allo and agave garden that bloomed in 1938 was the first to bloom in san diego the few other stories written about the alaw and agave garden sadly record its neglect and decline san diego does not adequately staff balboa park today and it did not do so in earlier times there simply was not the care given to the specialty garden that it needed decades passed and despite inadequate maintenance some sturdy aloe and agave plants persisted in the garden proving kate sessions point that these are hearty and useful plants for san diego they will survive on neglect but when a master plan for balboa park was commissioned in 1960 the garden was doomed the bartholomew plan described the aloe and agave garden as unmaintained and called for its abandonment the planners suggested that any worthy plants be moved to the cactus garden a few years later in the mid-1960s the garden was negatively impacted during the massive project of relocating and realigning park boulevard the alawin agave garden in 1971 was then completely destroyed when the land upon which it stood was paved over to create the spanish village parking lot we do not know if any of the aloe and agave plants were saved or relocated or if they were unceremoniously plowed under by a bulldozer we do know that one of the most botanically important specialty gardens and one of the best documented plant collections ever established in balboa park was neglected to death and we also know that a heartfelt community tribute to kate sessions lost out in the mounting pressure of the automobile in decisions about land use in balboa park a parking lot was deemed more important than the historic garden it replaced another garden that kate sessions brought to balboa park is the cactus garden and like the alawin agave garden it was magnificent when created then suffered decades of neglect and vandalism i almost called it a lost garden because it was forgotten and neglected for so many years but i think we can now say that it has been found because of a recent revitalization project that i&#39;ll discuss in a minute kate sessions lobbied and cajoled for many years before she saw the realization of her dream of a world-class cactus garden in balboa park she&#39;s on the record as first mentioning the idea in 1899 over the years she kept the idea alive with articles and in her talks to various groups in 1918 she made the point that san diego could become a world-class could become a world cactus center a place for the study of cactus because we had such ideal growing conditions for them in 1926 she said that san diego and balboa park could have the best cactus garden in the world and she urged someone to take up the cause and become and become the point person for this project in 1934 spoiler alert she finally found some success for her idea when it was announced in 1934 that balboa park would host the california pacific international exposition kate sessions saw her chance and she turned off the heat it took a lot of persuasion but she won support for a new cactus garden to be part of the exposition to create the garden kate was once again working with her friends john morley and chauncey jarabek but the new player was richard requa who was the architect in charge of the 1935 exposition he apparently was something of a tough sell but once he approved the garden and assigned it a location he was not closely involved the 1935 exposition was thrown together in record time and recall was plenty busy with other projects this map shows the additional buildings added by the 1935 exposition in what is called the palisades area of balboa park so to oh let me go back so to orient you here is the cabrillo bridge here&#39;s the plaza to panama the organ pavilion and these buildings are the buildings that were added to balboa park for the 1935 exposition i have enlarged this map so that you can see i&#39;m sorry my computer is skipping on me i&#39;ve enlarged this map so that you can see uh this first representation of this first rendering of the cactus garden in a balboa park map so here&#39;s the cactus garden oh man here we go here&#39;s the cactus garden i when i first saw this i thought it reminded me something of a drawing of a brain but this is the cactus garden as shown on the 1935 exposition map and i believe this is the first official rendering of the garden on a balboa park map now the garden was assigned a place behind this building which was actually left over from the 1915 exposition this was the new mexico building and if we&#39;re 1935 it was renovated and became the palace of education and of course today we know it as the balboa park club here&#39;s a nice aerial shot of the palisades area so air and space museum auto museum municipal gym this plaza that&#39;s currently under renovation and now it was entirely a parking lot and now half of it is a beautifully landscaped usable area and over here we have the balboa park club and the cactus garden and here&#39;s the close-up i believe the reason this stands out so much in these aerial photographs is because white sand dressing was used in the cactus garden that was really something of a fashionable way to display cactus at the time and here&#39;s a ground level picture of just one part of the garden after chauncey darabak had gotten it planted and just to give you a sense of the size of some of these plants and just the whole location here are some visitors right here and of course what&#39;s charming in this picture is the view of the cabrillo bridge so at last after 36 years of advocacy kate sessions did get to see and savor a magnificent cactus garden in balboa park again this garden was filled with donations from many local people including kate sessions own cactus collection but cactus growers across the state and as far away as texas and oklahoma sent plants this was the power of kate sessions and her her reputation in the horticultural world people wanted to contribute to this garden the most significant donation came from the federated garden clubs of arizona working with the university of arizona they shipped an astounding 15 tons of cactus and desert plants to san diego and they sent along a university employee as the expert to help plant the arizona donations the donation included 20 giant saguerros one twelve feet tall exposition postcards captured the exotic cactus garden and the display was featured in the exposition guidebook and it garnered some local press coverage later the cactus garden was recognized as one of the top three permanent landscape improvements to the park that resulted from the 1935 exposition but like the aloe and agave garden the cactus garden generated very little long-term interest almost nothing was written about the garden for decades and it was poorly maintained and badly vandalized over many years the master planners for the park did think the garden was worth saving and in 1960 recommended that it be better protected and that it received notable plants from the doomed aloe and agave garden i thought it was interesting in this master plan to see that they also recommended demolishing the palace of education our balboa park club obviously that was not done and on that location there was going to be picnic grounds overlooking the cactus garden that didn&#39;t happen carol greentree a san diego landscape historian whose name may be familiar to many of you wrote one of the few articles on the cactus garden in 1998 she compared the garden to a ghost town meaning that it was deserted and abandoned yet she pointed out that even in an overall picture of neglect some plants in the cactus garden were flourishing in ghost gardens she said the unintended relics of a once fine planting can be a proving ground for survival plants ghost gardens she said tell us which plants are sustainable a recent intervention by the balboa park conservancy has been the salvation of the cactus garden much of the work in the garden was made possible by a very generous donation from one of our mission hills neighbors the work is ongoing but the cactus garden is in better condition today than it has been in many years the conservancy is also rolling out its program of new park signage this year there is a plan to provide better directional signs so that visitors can find this somewhat hidden garden the cactus garden is sometimes called the old cactus garden the 1935 cactus garden or even the cabrillo canyon cactus garden i have proposed that the cactus garden be formally formerly renamed after kate sessions and that is being discussed but renaming anything in the park is very complicated so we will have to wait and see if a sign like this one ever appears meanwhile the rehabilitated cactus garden seems to be rediscovered and is enjoying a new popularity for photo shoots the oldest balboa park garden directly connected with sessions is the san jose hesper palm garden dating to 1914. this plantation of palms has never been recognized as a garden of balboa park it is not on any park map few people know that these palms are closely connected to kate sessions and that she is in fact responsible for this mass planning that&#39;s why i call this collection of palms a lost kate sessions garden almost no one knows about it kate sessions worked directly with john marley in creating this garden but as you will hear ts brandeigh a famous botanist who specialized in mexican plants was very much a part of the story gosh sorry the history of this garden begins in 1902 when kate sessions joined the brandeighs on a plant hunting expedition to the tip of baja california the explorers boarded a coastal steamship in ensenada for the four day trip to san jose del cabo then they rode mules for three days to reach a mountainous area where a special palm was growing this palm was believed to be new to science meaning that it had not been botanically classified or named the palm had never been imported to the united states in the right hand photo t.s brandeigh is sitting under a tree in baja and on the left is his wife dr catherine brandiche i wish this were a picture of kate sessions but there isn&#39;t one of her on this trip dr brandigee was photographed on an earlier baja expedition the brandeighs were two of the most respected botanists in the late 1800s and were definitely the nation&#39;s most renowned botanical couple when they moved to san diego in 1894 they of course became friends with kate sessions also important to this story is the illustrious or notorious german plant collector carl purpose from the americas and particularly from mexico he extracted and shipped tons and tons of plant material to europe where botanical gardens and private collectors had an early fascination with succulent plants it was carl purpose who determined that the palm was indeed a new species he published the first botanical description of the palm in a science journal and named it after mr brandiche with the common name san jose hesper palm from the mexico expedition kate sessions returned to san diego with small palms and bags and bags of palm seed then on her growing grounds near stevenson lewis street in mission hills she propagated hundreds of the new palms growing this plant species for the first time in the united states a grove of these small trees was later planted in balboa park this is what sessions wrote about the trip and the planting of the san jose hesper palms i dug from the field five small palms and brought them to san diego later a few thousand seeds were planted in 1914 325 were planted in balboa park just outside the rose garden of these 325 the park bought 175 and i donated 150 this group was planted in honor of mr and mrs brandigy well it might be confusing for us today to hear that the palms were planted near the balboa park rose garden because if you think about it there is no big palm grove near the rose garden but kate sessions is referring to the first roast garden in balboa park not the one we know today as you can tell from this old postcard the first rose garden was on the west side of the park it was planted before the 1915 exposition the cabrillo bridge helps us envision the location the garden was near the laurel street entrance and the approximate location of today&#39;s bowling greens in this photo the palm plantation is clearly visible on the northeast side of the bowling greens there&#39;s an assortment of palm species on view in this photograph but kate sessions san jose hesper palms extend down the side of cabrillo canyon and dominate this 1914 plantation and here&#39;s an aerial view taken from the balboa park tree inventory these not very green spaces are the bowling greens and each of the colored dots represents a tree the dark purple dots are san jose hesper palms in the inventory 188 palms were still growing in this area here are some recent photographs of the san jose hesper palm garden in balboa park the san jose hesper palm is still somewhat rare in the united states it&#39;s similar to the widely used washingtonia robusta the san jose hester palm is tall and has a very long life its slender trunk is one of its distinguishing features it&#39;s possible to stand amid these tall san jose hesper palms and look over to the kate sessions statue at the park entrance yet this is a forgotten and overlooked garden almost no one knows that there&#39;s a direct connection between the bronze woman standing at the park entrance and this one of a kind palm garden this garden is historically important because it represents the success of kate sessions only plant hunting expedition and it proclaims her talent as a propagator the garden is unique in the world and holds the largest collection of san jose palms in the united states therefore i have a proposal i think this garden should be recognized as the ko session san jose hesper palm garden directional and interpretive signage should tell the story of this garden and the connection to both sessions and the famous brandeighs just like every other garden in balboa park this one should be included on maps and in guides well i&#39;d like to close this story with some additional information about the brandeighs who were so important to the san jose hesper palm story these remarkable botanists added a wealth of information on the plants of california and mexico to the botanical record they spent months of their lives hiking and camping in remote remote locations to study plants catherine brandigee was once in a shipwreck off baja but managed to save her field notes and plant samples she broke her leg once in the high sierras and had to be packed out on a mule t s branded g wandered in the heat and barrenness of mexico for weeks at a time studying cactus the brandings elevated west coast botanical science with their exacting work and by publishing scores of scientific papers the mere presence of the brandiges brought distinction to san diego and their botanical expertise and connections in the plant world inspired kate sessions and the others who knew them the brandiges created san diego&#39;s first botanical garden and they built the largest private herbarium in the united states here are the types of herbarium sheets they prepared for botanical study when their collection was given to uc berkeley the size of the university herbarium was doubled when catherine and t s brandeigh came to san diego in night in 1894 they purchased property in bankers hill and they lived in a tent while building a brick structure for their books and herbarium they later expanded that building with living quarters here is the branded g house and herbarium on first avenue near redwood street take note of that tall chimney and unusual roof configuration on this bare piece of land the branded is created as already mentioned san diego&#39;s first botanical garden and here is catherine brandiche working in the garden with a house in the background sadly there are no remains of this once magnificent and important garden but you can connect with this history by visiting the brand g property in bankers hill and seeing the house where they lived it is not a museum you don&#39;t have to make reservations you won&#39;t even see the brand she named mentioned but their house is at the self-realization center on first avenue near redwood street you will see an irving gill building constructed when the bishop school had a campus on the former branded g property and behind it is the branded g house here it is recognizable by the tall chimney and roof configuration i hope you will all enjoy visiting this unsung historic site of the branded g home and garden in bankers hill as well as returning to balboa park to view the cactus garden and the san jose hesper palms with a new appreciation of their history and close connection to the life and work of kate sessions thank you so much for joining the program tonight and i&#39;m going to be happy to take your questions thank you so much nancy i just wanted to say that it was great a lot of history i knew nothing about and i&#39;ve been here all my life so i&#39;m going to be walking through the park looking a little more closely um i i have the first question if you don&#39;t mind when you say they&#39;re revitalizing the cactus garden yes you revitalize do you talk about i mean are they watering is that well there are there are many many things that they&#39;ve done uh i&#39;m gonna wait let me stop sharing my screen so i come back into view uh there are many things that have been done um one of the things that was really important was that they rebuilt all the trails and the pathways that lead down to the garden and they put in new drainage and different ways of preserving the pathways they did work on the um irrigation systems you know all over the park there are these antique irrigation systems and no one knows where the pipes run and where the connections are so anytime they have to work on the irrigation systems it&#39;s really a major undertaking but they&#39;ve done that they&#39;ve also put in a lot of new plants and trimmed up and cleaned up the plants that are there and they invited uh nan sternman who came in and and did some beautiful um i think she focused mainly on these big pots that were kind of like introductory to the garden you know one of the things about the gardens location is it is a little bit hidden back behind the balboa part club and if you don&#39;t know that it&#39;s there you might not ever walk back there which is why this new signage is going to be so important but she uh created some beautiful big uh plantings in pots that kind of you know brought you into the garden but it but and they&#39;re continuing to work i don&#39;t know what all else they&#39;re doing but those were the major things that i think were needed right off the bat very good and real quick on the palm canyon uh garden are they what are they trimming those do they maintain that now or you know i i actually took out one of my slides so that i wouldn&#39;t go too long on this but one of the slides i showed how uh the garden really is those palms are not main they don&#39;t do anything as far as i can tell you know there are a lot of trees falling over and uh it and i i don&#39;t even mind that i mean it&#39;s kind of a very natural looking area and you know you can walk over and take a look but um one of the things that&#39;s interesting to me is uh i don&#39;t know how self-seeding those palms are you know to have i think to have 188 palms left there after 107 years it&#39;s kind of amazing but i don&#39;t know how many of them may be you know reseeded and their newer trees but uh no it is it&#39;s not maintained as a garden quote it&#39;s it and garden is probably i was just using the word because my title was kate sessions garden probably a better name for that would be a grove it&#39;s a palm beach okay okay great um i do have a question here for some from someone if you don&#39;t mind no do you know that the red sandstone&#39;s rocks in the cactus garden are signature cake sessions she used them frequently to denmark edge of her landscaping yes i do know that and if the person who submitted that information can help me find out about exactly where those rocks come from and what that rock formation is called i would be thrilled i have been trying to research those rocks i&#39;ve read more geology articles on the web than i ever wanted to but i can&#39;t really nail down exactly where those rocks came from and what they are but i do know that she they are a signature of hers absolutely okay and another question um does recent book which you edited contains some of these stories about kate sessions i&#39;m sorry what was the question the question says does recent book which you edited contains some of these stories about kate sessions well the book is kate sessions own writing so it does certainly have the articles i was referring to when i said you know like over the years she wrote these articles so the book is the complete writings of kate sessions as published in california garden magazine published by san diego floral association and the the four of us who worked on editing this we did add some things like there is a biographical statement about sessions there&#39;s a timeline of sessions life we did include a lot of photographs that are not commonly published of kate sessions but it&#39;s not it&#39;s not um third-party stories about her except for that content okay and another question um how do you feel about the fact that these plans are mostly not native to san diego uh well how do i feel about it i&#39;m obviously glad we brought them here i i can&#39;t i don&#39;t envision uh san diego that&#39;s 100 native plants i think you know one of the great things about our climate is that we can grow so many different types of things and all of these plants are compatible with the low water requirements that we should respect in san diego so as long as something is um you know it&#39;s not invasive and it&#39;s not putting a strain on our water resources i have absolutely no objection to exotic plants yeah um and i the a comment back from about the red uh sandstone rocks it says they come from linda vista formation in kearny mesa and kate session has them noted in her field notes in san diego history center all right thank you and another question did kate sessions plant the palms on sunset boulevard oh wow i&#39;m sure i don&#39;t know the answer to this but i don&#39;t you know i don&#39;t think so i think they were probably planted by whoever the developer was you know at the time that&#39;s really amazing but that i do not know the answer to that i&#39;m sure i should um but i don&#39;t think i&#39;ve ever read that she planted them okay another mystery to solve exactly [Laughter] anyone else have any i&#39;ve just read all the questions that were there you there are a lot of uh wows and for your presentation and thank you thanks for being here with us and everyone is so from the other garden clubs are so um happy that they were able to join and we i certainly hope they&#39;ll come back for our next um programs anything else anybody oh okay palms on sunset boulevard are planted by miller family ron may is very knowledgeable about all that excellent oh thank you yes so um uh let&#39;s see thank you yeah someone said they&#39;ll be looking at balboa park with new eyes as i will walk around there but i need to look a little closer anyway thank you and thank you and thank you so much are we are we signing off here because i would i i&#39;m happy to stay on this zoom for a few minutes if there are anybody else i&#39;m waiting i don&#39;t see um any others yet that just thank yous now no other questions at this time because anyone has any now&#39;s the chance no i don&#39;t see any more okay i just want to say thank you that was a beautiful presentation made me want to go to the park and look for these gardens great thank you i&#39;m from the poway garden club by the way oh well thanks for joining very much for your invitation oh great i&#39;m glad you&#39;re here i want to add that our our mission hills garden walk is coming up may 8th and tickets will go on sale march 1st and we&#39;ve got eight incredible gardens so i i hope that you will all join us on may 8th hey and keep yeah just go to our website for information um so any i don&#39;t see any oh are there any walking tours which review some of this content you know of course there are no walking tours right now because they&#39;re not doing that sort of thing during the pandemic but i&#39;m trying to think um whether or not you know i don&#39;t think i think i have to say no because most of the walking tours don&#39;t make it over to the cactus garden because it&#39;s a little bit far for people to walk and um honestly most people don&#39;t know about the san jose hesper palms they just don&#39;t know the connection with kate sessions so i don&#39;t think so there are certainly general walking tours of balboa park and you will see there are garden tours where you will see other gardens and i know those will be resumed as soon as they&#39;re able to the conservancy is starting to do a lot of those tours because the park rangers no longer seem to have time to provide that service so the conservancy has been training new tour guides to do garden tours and other park tours and i&#39;m sure that as soon as it&#39;s possible to start those they&#39;ll be advertising them again yeah and i just hope that they get some of those signs you were um proposing you know the signage that&#39;s going to go around that would be helpful i think that it really will be and you know i i don&#39;t know if i i didn&#39;t spend a lot of time on this but you&#39;re going to be seeing throughout balboa park new signage and it&#39;s such a it&#39;s going to be a great improvement over the current directional signage and wayfinding in the park so that&#39;s supposed to start happening this spring very good and one more i&#39;m sorry do you have any suggestions for the desert garden future hmm what an interesting question well again i would just say maintenance and and i have to i do think the desert garden is fairly nicely maintained but you know that that is the biggest problem with these specialty gardens and not just in balboa park you know in any in any park the plants sometimes require special knowledge and maybe the park employees don&#39;t necessarily have that special knowledge and um but the larger problem is just shortages of staff to really devote the attention and time that these specialty gardens need but i would have to say i think overall the desert garden is pretty nicely maintained good okay i think that&#39;s it so thank you so much nancy we&#39;ll be seeing you again um that was great thank you you&#39;re welcome it&#39;s my pleasure goodbye everybody see you at our next meeting on when was it february 25th hopefully thank you good night

Transcript for:Kate Sessions and Balboa Park Gardens

Transcript for:
Kate Sessions and Balboa Park Gardens