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SOHO Unveils Presidio Park Plant Survey and Encyclopedia
July/August 2019
 Preview of the home page for the Presidio Park Plant Survey website |
A significant void in our knowledge and understanding of San Diego's natural history is about to be filled, thanks to botanical and horticultural experts and SOHO. A cultural resource plant survey and encyclopedia documenting Presidio Park is going online in July to commemorate San Diego's 250th. This free reference focuses on the park in the 20th century through today, with maps, historic plant lists, and other records that make this survey an extraordinarily important cultural and historic resource. It is a significant, eminently useful, and lasting gift to the city on its birthday.
Parish Rye, a Park Ranger for the City of San Diego, initiated this mammoth project several years ago and began posting some of the entries on Facebook in 2017. That's where Alana Coons, SOHO's director of education and communications, spotted it. Impressed by the entries and photos Rye was accumulating, she inquired about his end goal and offered SOHO's help in completing and publishing the survey online.
Having been a ranger for ten years in both Balboa Park and Presidio Park, Rye enjoys botanical history, and he ardently admires George Marston and his work as a parklands advocate and preservationist. For Rye, in large part, this project honors Marston's forward-thinking contributions to our region.
Mary Marston has written that her father considered Presidio Park his largest work, outranked only by his business. "He wanted it to be a place of refreshment for body and spirit…," she wrote, "and to be cherished as a memorial of truly great historical significance." Marston retained such strong feelings for the park that in 1946, the last year of his life, he sent a long message to city officials reminding them of the park's importance and character, and urging their continued stewardship.
The attractive, user-friendly survey and encyclopedia is arranged by eras, maps, and historic records. With the essential input of seven master gardeners and SOHO's team, this invaluable resource includes an encyclopedia of 113 genus and 207 species of plants and trees along with GPS maps showing where to find them in Presidio Park.
"The most important thing to me was to gain an understanding of how today's plants fit historically into the park's plantings of the past, and how the people from the past influenced what we have today," Rye wrote in an email. That's why he included Marston's 1936 Park Superintendent Percy Broell's previously unpublished maps with plant lists, horticulturalist Chauncey Jerabek's map with a "plant walk" from 1964 (and updated in1969), and uses the map that Alice M.Clark drew for California Garden magazine in 1962, he explained.
Rye credits the Mission Hills Garden Club, and the donation of a Trimble handheld GPS device for getting the project off the ground, so to speak.
For SOHO, this important legacy project helps mark our half-century of preservation achievements and will serve those responsible for the park's care, along with historians, horticulturists, landscape architects, gardeners, students, and others. Of course, its digital pages can easily be updated or expanded. A mobile app could be the next natural place to take this comprehensive resource, if funds can be identified.
Dig in to Presidio Park's emerald world beginning in July at SOHOsandiego.org and enjoy!
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