Founded 1994Let's Talk Plants!
May 17, 2025, 1:30 p.m.
In-person At Oasis Rancho Bernardo Online registration required - SD Hort Member (and their guest) registration is FREE and
(Consider joining or renewing with the San Diego Horticultural Society for $30.00 and attend this meeting for free.)
Our May speaker, John Clements, will enlighten us with some fascinating plant-related history of San Diego.
John Clements, the 2022 SD Hort Horticulturist of the Year, will present The Horticultural History of San Diego at the in-person general meeting of the San Diego Horticultural Society at 1:30pm on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at San Diego Oasis in Rancho Bernardo.
John Clements has been a horticultural professional for 49 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, former Director of Gardens at the 37-acre San Diego Botanic Garden and now radio podcaster with Walter Andersen Nursery’s Garden Talk. Find it on 1170 KCBQ, I Heart radio, or listen as a podcast through the nursery’s website.
John’s first real “job” of the many he’s had over the years was as a historian with a focus on agricultural history for the State Parks Department. He loved that job! This presentation brings him back to that first vocation with a little local color thrown in.
The vintage photo at the beginning of this article is a favorite of John’s for a number of reasons. He graduated from Mission Bay high school which wasn’t far from the areas in the photo and spent so much of his formative years in Pacific and Mission Beach.
The year is 1946. Look at all that bare land! Before there was Clairemont, University City, or the Golden Triangle those mesas east of PB were truly where the deer and the antelope played.
You can visually follow the contours of Rose Canyon where the concrete ribbon of the I-5 would soon meander. Mt. Soledad is devoid of any development. The best part is the dark dot just to the left of the middle of the photograph. That dark area is a large Ficus macrophylla which is already very noticeably sizable even in 1946.
This was a Moreton Bay fig planted by Kate Sessions shortly after the turn of the century.
Ms. Sessions ran a nursery along what is now Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach and had growing grounds on some of the hills that are covered with military housing in the photo, built for sailors during WW2.
A friend of John’s that was a navy physician lived in a house on Donaldson St. which had that large ficus just outside his back yard. Yes, the tree is still there, and it was a real treat for John to be so close to horticultural history.
Unless otherwise stated, we meet the third Saturday of the month at 1:30p atSan Diego Oasis in Rancho Bernardo, 17170 Bernardo Center Dr., San Diego, CA 92128.
San Diego Oasis at Rancho Bernardo - San Diego (oasisnet.org)
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