Horticulturist of the Year

After a long and rewarding career in legal education, Nancy Carol Carter retired as a Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Research Center at the University of San Diego in 2013. During her academic career she published numerous articles on federal law as applied to Indian nations and wrote the first guides for building tribal legal histories and researching American Indian Law. She created the first website chronicling the history of Native American tribal groups in San Diego County. She holds a BS, MS, MLS and JD and is admitted to practice by the State Bar of Oklahoma and the Northern District of California.

In retirement, Carter turned to her long interest in the history of horticulture, gardens and landscapes. She has completed garden history courses and researches and publishes widely on the life and work of Kate O. Sessions, on lost stories of Balboa Park, and on the work of many local gardeners and horticulturists. Carter has made more than 100 invited presentations to garden clubs and community groups and, as a member of the SDSU Osher program faculty, offers continuing education classes. Two current projects are the publication of a book on Paul G. Thiene, the landscape architect of the 1915 Balboa Park exposition, and the release of her accumulated Kate Sessions research on a publicly accessible website, KateOSessions.info, due to launch on March 25, 2026.         

Carter is the associate editor of California Garden magazine and serves on the boards of the California Garden and Landscape History Society, the San Diego Floral Association and the Balboa Park Committee of 100. With Forever Balboa Park, she serves on the Horticulture and Park Improvement Committees. She is a trustee of the Library Foundation SD, chairing its Governance Committee.          

Within Balboa Park, Carter contributes to the interpretive signs describing the history of buildings and gardens. She has successfully campaigned to gain official name recognition for two Balboa Park gardens attributable to Kate O. Sessions and the Cactus Garden and the San Jose Hesper Palm Grove now bear her name. Carter received the Friends of Balboa Park Millennium Award in 2015 for park contributions and advocacy. In 2025 Save Our Heritage Organization recognized her with the People in Preservation Culture Keeper: Landscape Heritage award.

Dennis Mudd created Calscape, an online resource you won't want to miss. The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) has been working in partnership with Dennis Mudd, creator of Calscape, to bring this outstanding resource to the attention of more gardeners. The unique aspect of what Dennis has created is the site's ease of use: just type in your address and find out what native plants grow there. Verified sightings by a host of botanists and citizen scientists have been combed through and organized. Dennis and his organization went further, though: he has layered information about plants’ use in gardens with information about size, sun/shade requirements, and even where to buy plants in local nurseries or online. The photos are large and clear. Even better—you can download your choices into spreadsheets for shopping or to use as inventory lists.

From Music to Native Plants and Smart Food

This is not Dennis’s first entrepreneurial venture. He founded MusicMatch, Slacker Radio, and most recently the Smart Food Foundation, which provides whole foods and nutrition education to 3500 low income families in San Diego every month. What prompted his horticulture adventure was buying a home in Poway twelve years ago. He began with conventional landscaping, but wanted to capture the native surroundings that he and his wife, Pam, enjoyed on their bike rides and runs through the hills. Connecting the natural surroundings near his home and a passion for healthy living to his garden, he started working with native plants.

Local Local

But even this refinement was not enough for the driven, passionate visionary. “In a state as biologically and geologically diverse as California, locality matters. What grows in the loamy soil of the Sacramento River Delta is bound to be vastly different than the arid hillsides of Southern California.” In order to satisfy his own curiosity, Dennis started to catalog information. With the help of CNPS, the Jepson Herbarium at UC Berkeley's Consortium of California Herbaria, and several talented programmers, he created a database and website that is a fun and powerful planning tool designed to help Californians restore nature one garden at a time. The site now describes and maps the natural range of early 7000 California native plants. Maps are based on more than two million field observations made by members of the Consortium of California Herbaria.

Dennis is a committed futurist looking for ways to help the planet, and helping us help ourselves to optimal health and vitality. His efforts have given us a great tool to help mitigate, and hopefully one day reverse, the loss of California’s natural habitat due to development.

Jeff Moore has owned and operated Solana Succulents, north of San Diego, California, since 1992. It is a small retail specialty nursery, and he carries as much of the rare and unusual as possible, along with more common and colorful succulents. He has written five books - Under the Spell of Succulents, Aloes and Agaves, Soft Succulents, Spiny Succulents, and Agaves - Species, Cultivars and Hybrids.

Jeff's nursery has long been a destination for succulent enthusiasts and lovers of unusual, exotic and water-wise plants. SDHS has frequently hosted Jeff as one of our most popular monthly speakers.

Jeff's HOY award presentation will be followed by a talk given by him on Dudleyas, subject of his next book that will be available March 2024. Dudleyas are rare, native succulents that are best grown from seed. The book is coauthored by Jeremy Spath and Kelly Griffin.

Beginning in 2015, Bob Lutticken has been instrumental in creating the award winning school garden that exemplifies of how gardens can educate. The garden began by transforming a little used tennis court into a thriving outdoor lab to teach students about growing healthy food, and giving back to the community by donating produce to the people in our community that need it the most. The garden was featured on our Spring Garden tour last March.

John Clements has been a horticultural professional for 46 years. Former nursery owner, gardener and koi pond builder to the rich and famous, horticulturalist, commercial fruit tree farmer, garden writer, agricultural historian, co-administrator of the San Diego Gardener Facebook group, and Director of Gardens at the 37-acre San Diego Botanic Garden.

California native Nan Sterman is a garden designer, author, botanist, and award-winning garden communicator, dedicated to the transformation of planted landscapes from overly thirsty and resource intensive to climate appropriate and sustainable.

Jim Bishop served as the third President of the San Diego Horticultural Society (SDHS) from 2011-2017. He joined the Society at its very first meeting in September 1994, and he served on the Board for 2 years prior to assuming the Presidency. Jim wrote the article below about his life in horticulture.

My name is Jim Bishop and, like many of you, I am a plantaholic. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a passion for plants. I began with wonderment at the simple dandelions I saw growing in a front yard, extended to actually growing thousands of plants, and evolved into a goal to visit as many gardens as possible, and then to searching out unusual plants growing in their natural environments.

My passion for plants has led me on a wonderful path through life and much of it is the result of the San Diego Horticultural Society. Not having a professional career in horticulture or the landscaping industry, I spent much of my life feeling that I hadn’t met “my people." However, when I sat in the back row of the first meeting of SDHS in September 1994 and watched Steve Brigham (2009 Horticulturalist of the Year) Don Walker (1st SDHS president and 2005 Horticulturalist of the Year) clown around and talk about plants, I knew I had finally found them. I could never have imagined the path I would follow as a result of attending that meeting.

Thanks to the SDHS newsletter, there is no need for me to document my life experiences with horticulture in this column. Since 2011, I’ve been writing the column for our newsletter entitled “My Life with Plants” and you can read all about how plants have interacted with my life in these columns.

While my obsession has been with plants, it has also given me the opportunity to meet many incredible people--horticulturists, writers, photographers, designers, home gardeners, teachers, countless speakers, and plant enthusiasts from around the world. Some of those wonderful people include many of our past Horticulturists of the Year honorees and I feel privileged to now be part of this amazing group of twenty-four. (You can learn more about them on our website.)

While not exactly a horticulturist, the most significant person in my world, plant or otherwise, is Scott Borden, who I met at a garden party in 1994. He has enabled me to truly follow my passion for plants and led me on journeys around the world.

Since leaving the software industry in 2008, my goal has been to inspire climate-appropriate San Diego horticulture wherever possible. We live in one of the most diverse and unique plant environments on the planet and every San Diegan should be exposed to the possibilities. This appreciation of our environment has become even more important with climate change, our unpredictable rain and water supply, and our ever-growing population. Over the years, Scott and I have shared our garden with many horticultural-related non-profits, been on many public and private garden tours, and had our garden featured in printed and online publications.

I’m basically a shy person who is perfectly content to stay home and putter in the garden. However, I also realize that by sharing I can have a much bigger impact. Being asked to be President of SDHS in 2011 was a big step for me and required moving me out of my comfort zone. Over time I’ve become more comfortable in front of people and asking others to help and I have realized that it takes a community of individuals to make an all-volunteer organization successful. I realize that small actions by many people can lead to large results and I’m happy to have contributed to the success of SDHS.

During my tenure as president, SDHS was able to continue to build on our previous successes in supporting the San Diego Horticultural community. During my tenure we:

• Maintained low membership fees
• Introduced an Annual Garden tour of private gardens in different areas of San Diego. This significantly improved our budget.
• Built a new website that tied membership, email, event and payment processing together in one place
• Automated the membership initiation and renewal process, saving thousands of dollars
• Moved the newsletter to an online format saving thousands of dollars on printing and mailing costs
• Made the online newsletter free to everyone
• Offered “Featured Garden” tours to private gardens and places of horticultural interest
• Offered workshops
• Created six award winning gardens at the San Diego County Fair
• Relocated monthly meetings to a more comfortable, centrally located facility

It was truly an honor to serve as SDHS president and I encourage everyone to get involved in their local plant groups. Going forward I’ll be active more in the background of SDHS, continuing to write my column and helping out where my skills are needed. I’ll also continue sharing our garden and plant adventures online through pictures and stories in social media. And of course, I’ll continue working on our private garden.

I am very thankful to the SDHS board for selecting me as the 2019 Horticulturist of the Year. This is a great and cherished honor.

Greg Rubin is a big man, but even greater is his passion, enthusiasm, and promotion of natural ecologies and landscaping with California native plants.

Many of us have come to horticulture as a side passion or second career. Likewise, Greg began his professional life as an aerospace engineer. Those who only know his love of native plants may not realize that the discipline and science of his first career has deeply carried through into his current business.

An Unexpected Start of a New Career

Growing up in the hills of Chatsworth, Greg certainly played in the chaparral. But it wasn’t until 1985—when his parents asked him and his brother, Ed, to re-landscape the family home—that a good friend, Bill Entz, said they should do it in native plants, and he really started paying attention to them. In the process, Greg developed an interest in the local ecology. He soon became involved with others of like mind, in particular, Bert Wilson, owner and founder of Las Pilitas Nursery.

Greg was excited to learn about the unique climate and plant palette of Southern California. The plants were a world apart from the popular thirsty grass lawns, palm trees, tropical plants, and European staples which dominated the landscapes of his neighborhood. The natives had their own beauty and were part of an intriguing and complex ecology which captivated his scientific and aesthetic mind.

The general reaction to native plants in landscaping and horticulture at that time was to either denigrate or ignore them. Native landscapes were thought to become dry and ugly in the summer, be difficult to grow and maintain, and to promote the spread of fire.

Credit Lucy Warren

Flying in the face of popular perception, Greg continued to create beautiful native landscapes for neighbors through word of mouth. These gardens were beautiful year-round, incorporated appealing texture and color, and used far less water.

In 1993, Greg transitioned out of his aerospace career and devoted his full-time efforts to his successful and unusual landscaping business. To date, California’s Own Native Landscape Design has designed and installed over seven hundred native landscapes throughout Southern California, including residential, commercial, and institutional projects.

Pushing Paradigms With Zen Natives

Greg has a great sense of humor and likes to push people’s paradigms when he faces resistances to natives. As native landscapes developed their own niche, some people railed that “all native landscapes look the same.” To that end, in 2013, he joined with San Diego Botanic Garden to create a Japanese garden for the San Diego County Fair—about the farthest conceptual style from a typical California native garden that anyone could consider.

Credit Lucy Warren

With a magnificent tea house and Zen rock garden, Greg proved, without any doubt, that garden style is in the features. The tea house even featured a beautiful native lemonade berry bonsai created by bonsai master Phil Tacktill. The garden won multiple awards and was the hit of the garden show at the Fair. Greg claims that he actually had to pare down his plant list because so many natives were appropriate for a Japanese style garden. (And, yes, he has been commissioned to do several Japanese style native landscapes since then.)

More Than a Native Landscape Designer: Educator, Author, and Researcher

Greg promotes planting natives wherever he goes and is always looking for ways to spread the word. In addition to broadcast media appearances, he has been featured in such prestigious publications as: the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Sunset, Kiplinger’s, San Diego Home/Garden, and California Garden magazine. He has served on many boards, including: Agua Hedionda Lagoon Foundation, California Native Plant Society, Lux Art Institute, and California Native Garden Foundation. He gives presentations and workshops to conferences, garden clubs, and other organizations throughout Southern California and is in high demand as a public speaker and instructor.

In 2011, to broaden his audience and further his reach, he broached the idea of writing a book on native plants to Lucy Warren, garden writer and former editor of California Garden magazine. They had previously collaborated on numerous articles and worked well together. He wanted an accurate, leading-edge text about native plants and their ecology which would educate people to the nuances which he had learned over the prior decades. Not just a plant guide, but a book which would help people to create successful native landscapes, covering everything from ecology, design, plant communities, maintenance, fire resistance, and more. The result was their first book, The California Native Landscape: The Homeowner’s Design Guide to Restoring its Beauty and Balance, published by Timber Press in the spring of 2013. It is now in its fourth printing. In 2015, Timber requested that Greg and Lucy create another book as a plant guide to help homeowners get started quickly; hence, The Drought Defying California Landscape: 230 Native Plants for a Lush, Low-Water Landscape.

Greg continues to do research and is on his fourth year of a contract with the United States Navy testing the fire resistance of natives. They are investigating whether a properly installed and maintained native landscape can actually help protect a home from fire. Greg has also discovered a major source for the failure of urban native landscapes—Argentine ants—and continues to investigate safe and effective ways to combat them.

We are delighted to honor lifetime member Debra Lee Baldwin as our Horticulturist of the Year. Many members know Debra for her enormous contribution in popularizing the ecologically responsible (and beautiful) use of succulents in the garden. Multitalented Debra writes with an evocative and nuanced vocabulary, paints richly hued lifelike watercolors, takes vibrant photographs, gardens with enthusiasm, and shares all her passions through books, lectures, videos, and social media. Learn more about Debra from her website (debraleebaldwin.com), especially the “About Debra” section, which outlines her background and accomplishments. 

I had the good fortune to join Debra in her Escondido garden in early April, where we shared the scrumptious and colorful lunch she had prepared before strolling through her vibrant garden. Debra has recently finished work on the completely revised second edition of “Designing with Succulents,” which she’ll have available when she speaks at our October meeting. We discussed:

How did the love of plants you got as a child set the seeds that grew into your ongoing wish to share and educate people about plants and nature? 

My father, an accountant, also was a rancher and naturalist. We often discussed insects, birds, reptiles, plants, the seasons, and the stars. But it wasn’t until the ‘80s when working with Peter Jensen, then editor of San Diego Home/Garden magazine, that I realized the positive difference a garden journalist can make.

If you weren’t doing what you are doing now, what can you imagine yourself involved in?

I’m intrigued by what motivates people and how they interact, so I might become trained as a therapist or Marriage and Family Counselor. 

What do you look for when adding a new plant to your garden, and why?

I’ve gardened on a half-acre in the foothills north of Escondido for a quarter century, continually adding plants. At first it was all about “Where will it do well?” which resulted in a visual mish-mash.

Now, a new plant has to be practical, beautiful, and enhance sight lines.

For the last ten years, you have been enormously successful at sharing your love of succulents and promoting their use in the garden. If you weren’t living in San Diego County, with its wealth of succulent growers and hobbyists, do you think you’d still be so enamored with this plant group?

In a less hospitable region, I probably wouldn’t grow many succulents in my garden. I do think, though, that I’ll always have succulents as potted plants—wonderful specimens arrayed in one-of-a-kind, art pots. 

Is there another group of plants (besides succulents) that you think has similar potential and that should be used more in gardens, particularly here in San Diego County?

I think bromeliads and furcraeas are underutilized in coastal landscapes, and most gardens would benefit from the addition of natives. 

Does the fact that most succulents are so incredibly easy to propagate (for yourself or to share with others) make it harder for nurseries to sell these plants? 

Not significantly. 

Do nurseries have to keep a large inventory of many different species and cultivars in stock to satisfy the demand? 

It depends on their target market. A large nursery’s most lucrative customers are commercial properties and landscapers shopping for clients’ gardens. For both, tried-and-true plants tend to be the norm. 

We keep seeing new cultivars introduced nearly every month – do you think that pace will continue? 

Yes. 

Do you see some older varieties declining in use as newer choices come along? 

I hope so, because certain common older varieties can be poor choices. (See my video What You MUST Know About Century Plants at youtube.com/watch?v=KBs-Hqbq48U.)

Which succulent species or cultivars of would you encourage people to use more of, and why?

Consider using large agaves that don’t pup (like A. ovatifolia and A. guiengola); aeoniums that stay compact and don’t form tall, ungainly trunks (shrub-forming A. haworthia, for example, and A. ‘Kiwi’); echeverias that withstand the rigors of the open garden (like E. agavoides, E. imbricata, and E. ‘Sahara’); spineless or near-spineless opuntias (which make a great backdrop, hedge and/or firebreak, are edible, and get by on rainfall alone); large aloes with tall, glorious flower spikes (such as A. speciosa, A. vanbalenii, and A. ferox); small aloes that are mound-forming over time (such as A. nobilis and A. brevifolia); tree succulents (such as Beaucarnea recurvata, Dracaena draco, Aloe ‘Hercules’, Pachypodium lamerei, and yuccas); cacti that look gorgeous backlit (golden barrels, silver torches); jade cultivars with interesting leaves (‘Hobbit’, ‘Gollum’, ‘Tricolor’, ‘Hummel’s Sunset’); dasylirions and hesperaloes (desert plants with slender, upright leaves and fountainlike shapes); new ice plant cultivars in eye-popping colors; Othonna capensis (a good ground cover and cascader for terraces and containers); Peperomia graveolens ‘Ruby’ (a shade succulent that stays red); variegated elephant’s food (Portulacaria afra ‘Variegata’), and shrub sedums of all sorts. 

What three things about succulents do you still find surprising? 

Their longevity as cuttings or rootless plants, the exquisite symmetry of rotund cacti and euphorbias, and the intriguing bud imprints (scalloped patterns) on agave leaves. 

If you could give a gardener new to succulents one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Browse my website’s FAQs and articles; visit my YouTube channel, and obtain my book, “Succulents Simplified,” which was written with the novice in mind.

Plant enthusiasms change over time, and years ago every home seemed to have at least some roses. In the last decade or two magazines have been showcasing the meadow look, with grasses (and other plants) used in a naturalistic way. Southern California has seen the movement away from water-guzzling lawns in favor of less thirsty plantings. Any predictions for what comes next, 
and why? 

OK! You heard it here first:

Lawns won’t return, except perhaps as no-mow meadows, and time-intensive poodled shrubs will disappear. The word “waterwise,” which currently defines the correct way to garden, will be replaced by a term that acknowledges the land and its potential, perhaps “naturewise.” It’ll still be OK to let a lawn die, but not to leave precious terrain barren. Productive yards will take precedence over the merely pretty, and small will be no exception. Milkweed will be a must-have, and the monarch butterfly, now facing extinction, will resurge.

Forward-thinking landscape designers will launch divisions of gardeners who understand how to maintain yards that lack hedges and lawns. (Succulent gardens need maintaining seasonally, or at least three times a year. Mow-and-blow gardeners prefer weekly or monthly clients, and therefore tend not to be interested.) 

Visionary designers and creative gardeners will innovate a new, minimalist style of landscape, one that comes to define Southern California, and that will be hailed as “the ultimate no-water, no-maintenance garden.” Keynotes will be Southwest succulents with simple lines and sculptural shapes: yuccas, hesperaloes, dasylirions, dudleyas, agaves, and cacti. 

Long a pariah plant, cacti will come into its own. Large varieties that are spherical, cylindrical, or spineless will be in demand. Focal-point gardens of cacti prized for their translucent spines will be showcased in rocky, elevated beds and positioned so the plants are haloed by early morning or late afternoon sun.

This New Southern California Garden will also incorporate low-water, Old World succulents such as Euphorbia ammak, Portulacaria afra ‘Variegata’, blue senecio, colorful jades, ice plants, and shrub aeoniums. Rocks of every sort, from pea gravel to immense boulders, will occupy half or more of newly installed landscapes. No worries: These will look nothing like the cliché gravel gardens of midcentury tracts or desert gardens typical of Tucson!

Because flat gardens will be seen as boring and unnatural, yards will be sculpted with berms, swales, dry streambeds, and pathways paved with flagstone and stabilized DG. 

People who have assumed they could plunk a few free succulents in the ground and topdress the rest with gravel will, over the next decade, be overwhelmed by enormous Agave americanas that are hazardous and expensive to remove and, if encroaching on streets and sidewalks, a liability. Agave snout weevil is a wild card---if uncontrolled, it could remove currently popular but susceptible species from our region’s gardens and nurseries. 

Sun shades of technologically advanced, all-weather fabric will be in every new garden, especially east of I-15. (The shades provide an ideal microclimate by diffusing strong light and providing frost protection. Moreover, they don’t drop leaves.)

With many people erroneously believing that our water woes are over due to the recent rains, interest in more thirsty gardens may arise—those lush with roses, tropicals, and edibles. Regardless, demand will increase for every sort of food-producing plant because homeowners in their 30s and 40s no longer trust commercial suppliers and want to know exactly what they—and their children—are eating. 

Dwarf and multi-grafted fruit trees and raised vegetable beds will be commonplace. Professional “home farmers” will create and tend the organic vegetable beds and chicken coops of the well-heeled. Growing unusual varieties from seed catalogs will be bragged about, recipes for such oddities shared on social media, and tasting parties held at harvest time.

Blending such trends will be increased awareness of edible and herbal succulents, such as Aloe vera, cacti grown for its fruit (including vining dragon fruit), nopales, yucca petals, chalk lettuce (Dudleya edulis), and possibly peyote (if voters approve it!).

Over the first 100 years of San Diego Zoo Global’s existence, an international botanical treasure sprouted and spread. In 1919, Zoo founder Dr. Harry Wegeforth rode his Arabian horse around the arid, barren, and hilly acreage set aside for the future Zoo, using his walking cane to plant tree seeds as he went. Acacia, pepper, and eucalyptus were some of the first trees planted. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Zoo received many gifts of plants from wealthy families.

During the 1940s, the Zoo cultivated its own Victory Gardens to provide vegetables for its growing collection of animals. Beginning in the 1980s, plants at the Zoo became more than just beautiful and educational—they were increasingly used to provide species-appropriate food for the animals (including eucalyptus for koalas, acacia for giraffes, and Eugenia for primates) and structures for exhibits, whenever possible. In addition, the Browse Team cuts, prepares, and ships ficus and eucalyptus to zoos across the nation that are unable to grow their own.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the organization’s botanical efforts spread to Escondido and the development of the Wild Animal Park (now the San Diego Zoo Safari Park). In addition to landscaping for comfort and enjoyment of both animal and human visitors, a knoll once covered with sumac and chaparral underwent a tree-lined transformation to become the Nicholas T. Mirov Conifer Arboretum. Named after the noted plant physiologist and biochemist, the five-acre arboretum’s goals were the acquisition, propagation, and exhibition of conifer trees from around the world, including rare and endangered species.

An Old World Succulent Garden, Baja Garden, and Nativescapes Garden soon filled another hillside, thanks to the energy of volunteers from local horticultural clubs. Partnerships with these types of organizations allow the Park to share the beauty and wonder of bonsai creations and epiphyllums with millions of guests each year.

In 1993, the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park collections were accredited by the American Association of Museums. This was cause for jubilation, since they were only the sixth and seventh zoos to ever receie this recognition. A great deal of work went into preparing for the accreditation process for each of San Diego Zoo Global’s designated collections. Every plant in the designated collections was identified, mapped, and accessioned. It was a gargantuan task. Each plant received a record including its accession number and botanical name, the date it was acquired and the source, and its location on grounds.

The Zoo’s accredited collections are of acacia, aloe, bamboo, cycads, erythrina, ficus, orchids, and palms. In addition, the grounds are home to a number of geographical and developing collections that are not formally accredited, such as hibiscus, pachyforms, and flora of Hawaii, Australia, Africa, and Madagascar.

The Safari Park’s accredited collections include the Baja Garden, Nativescapes Garden, and Conifer Arboretum. The Park also hosts the Bonsai Pavilion, with an outstanding collection of bonsai plants maintained by volunteers from San Diego Bonsai Club and San Pu Kai Bonsai Club.