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Statue of Kate Sessions in Balboa Park

Kate Sessions planted Balboa Park, one tree at a time

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Photo: RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Kate Sessions was born in San Francisco in 1857 and graduated from the University of California in 1881 with a degree in science, unusual for a woman then. She came to San Diego in 1884 to teach school but soon turned to plants and opened a nursery and flower shop.

The deal

In 1892, Sessions made an agreement with the city to lease 30 acres in City Park, a mostly bare mesa. In exchange she agreed to plant 100 trees a year in the park and provide 300 more trees elsewhere in the city. She planted trees and shrubs from around the world, testing which would thrive in San Diego’s dry climate. Many of the oldest trees in Balboa Park came from her nursery.

When the park was being prepared for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, she was active in landscaping work.

Changing San Diego’s look

Sessions introduced or popularized many plants now common in Southern California, including jacarandas, bird of paradise and many succulents. She later ran nurseries in Mission Hills and Pacific Beach, wrote about gardening and taught classes.

In 1939 she became the first woman to receive the Meyer Medal for plant introduction. She died in 1940. A statue of her stands in Balboa Park, and Kate O. Sessions Memorial Park in Pacific Beach preserves part of her old nursery land.

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