S is for San Diego our next stop on the A-Z April Blog Challenge Read Your World

Happy Earth Day! I hope you will have a chance to be outside and enjoy this beautiful spring day. It is very fitting that today’s stop on the A-Z blog challenge is S because that means we get to visit one of my favorite cities. The book I’d like to share today not only celebrates San Diego but should encourage us with a great example of how one person who cares can make a tremendous difference.

I try to get to San Diego as often as I can. My three brothers have homes there and one of my daughters attended university there. There is always way too much to see and do in the limited time I have but I always try to get to Balboa Park. When walking into the park with my family, we came to a statue of Kate Session, “The Mother of Balboa Park.” I realized that this was someone I wanted to know more about.

A few months later, I had a chance encounter at the SCBWI conference with H. Joseph Hopkins who showed me his newly published picture book about Kate Sessions. The book is written with clear and witty text and is beautifully illustrated.

The Tree Lady: the true story of how one tree-loving woman changed a city forever
By H. Joseph Hopkins (author) and Jill McElmurry (illustrator)
Beach Lane Books
picture book biography grades 1 – 5

Kate Sessions grew up in Northern California in the 1860s where she spent much of her childhood in the woods. She was different than most girls of the time as she didn’t mind getting dirty and she devoted herself to the study of science. She attended the University of California and was the first woman to graduate with a degree in science. She accepted a teaching job in San Diego and found herself in an area void of trees. San Diego was a desert town. From the school where Kate taught, she could see the desolate city park where cows grazed and people dumped their trash. Despite the doubts of most people, Kate believed trees could grow there.

Kate set about finding trees that could grow in a desert climate with little water. She wrote to gardeners who lived in arid places and asked them to send her seeds of plants that didn’t need much water. She traveled to Mexico to find trees that could grow on steep dry hills and canyons. She arranged with the city officials to plant 100 trees a year in exchange for land in the park for a plant nursery. When the announcement was made that the Panama-California Exposition was going to be held in San Diego, the city leaders wanted more trees what became known as Balboa Park. Kate asked her friends to come to tree planting parties. When it was time for the fair, millions of trees had been planted and Kate became known as the “Mother of Balboa Park.”

Kate Sessions felt that everyone could be a gardener. She wrote gardening articles for the local paper and played a large role in the San Diego Floral Association. When you visit San Diego, you can enjoy the leafy shade and beautiful plants and thank Kate Sessions.

As everyone knows, California is experiencing a monumental drought. We all need to follow the example of Kate and fill our gardens with plants that don’t need much water.

If you are interested in using this book with students, I suggest you visit Tina Cho’s store at Teacher’s Pay Teachers for a great resource.