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A Historic Gift to San Diego: The Presidio Park Plant Survey
September/October 2019
During our 50th anniversary year and San Diego's 250th, SOHO, with partner Parish Rye, is pleased to present the Presidio Park Plant Survey and encyclopedia as a legacy gift to all, and as a resource for the current and future protection and restoration of Presidio Park's historic landscape.
SOHO first became aware of this important plant identification project in the summer of 2018, when attractive photographs and in-depth descriptions of plantings in the over 60-acre park cropped up on a Facebook page. Recognizing immediately the great value and interest there would be in this information, SOHO sought out the page's creator. Parish Rye is a City of San Diego park ranger, self-trained plant documentarian, and owner of this vast data collection. We wanted to better understand his scientific methods and to explore with him how to share this horticultural treasure-trove portraying a National Historic Landmark with the public in San Diego and beyond.
This free reference focuses on the park with maps, historic plant lists, and other records. The survey contains an illustrated 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," Parish wrote in an email. That is why he included previously unpublished maps with plant lists from 1936 by Percy Broell, the park superintendent hired by park patron and steward George Marston; as well as the 1961 Alice M. Clark map created for California Garden magazine; and the updated 1969 map from horticulturalist Chauncey Jerabek that overlays the Clark map.
 Planting map by Alice M. Clark, 1961 |
Thanks to the foresight of the Mission Hills Garden Club more than a decade ago, and to Parish's dogged perseverance and enthusiasm for partnering with SOHO, this valuable research fills a significant void in San Diego's living history. Our hope is that it will serve those responsible for the park's care, making their tasks much easier to protect and restore the park's landscape, and assist historians, horticulturists, landscape architects, gardeners, students, and others. A mobile app could be the next natural place to take this comprehensive resource, if funds can be identified.
Explore the roots of the park of yesterday and today HERE.
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