• calendar_month April 12, 2024
• folder Sharing

Kate Sessions, a pioneering female horticulturalist help make over the natural environment of Southern California. Sessions was born in San Francisco, during the gold speculators and vigilantes. During her early childhood her family moved near Lake Merritt, which in 1870, would be designated as the country's first official wildlife refuge. She was among the small group of women to attend U.C. Berkeley in the initial years after the Board of Regents opened admission to female students, and, in 1881, received her degree in natural science.

After graduating, she enrolled in business school in San Francisco, but was lured south by a job offer as a school teacher in San Diego. Plants has always been her passion, but once she arrived in So Cal, that passion exploded. Her job as a teacher lasted only one year, and she quickly purchased a nursery and flowers shop and established flower cultivating in Coronado, Pacific Beach, and Mission Hills. 

She was fascinated with plants growing in exotic parts of the world, and begin experimenting with bringing seeds and plants from Europe, Mexico, and South America, as well as cultivating native California plants. Kate became the most sought-after landscape designer for homeowners and residential developers. 

In 1892, she changed California's landscape forever. Sessions leased 32 acres of land owned by the city of San Diego which was then known as City Park. These fields were barren, pest-ridden, and lacked any formal landscaping. Sessions agreed to amend the situation by planting 100 new trees per year in the park and 300 trees per year elsewhere on public lands around the city. In exchange, she could use the property as a kind of laboratory and growing field. That property was filled with cypress, eucalyptus, palms, and jacaranda. 

Session work quickly spread, as did her popularity. Jacarandas, with their beautiful blossoms in the distinctive purple color, were an easy sell, and in the 1920s and 30s they were planted extensively in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Sessions died in 1940, but her legacy continued as Los Angeles grew and jacarandas became on of the most recognizable trees in the region. 

Most of the jacarandas seen in L.A. are Jacaranda mimosifolia, one of the 49 different types of flowering jacaranda trees. These trees measure 58 feet high, 98 inches round the trunk, and more than 73 feet across the spread of the branches. 

Thank you, Katherine Olive Sessions for giving us these beautiful trees!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JmBhL_R-e0