California GArden Archives

FROM THE ARCHIVES

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted from May/June 2023, Volume 114 No. 3

Exactly one hundred years ago, San Diego Floral Association was settling into its first home in Balboa Park, the Kansas Building. Funding for needed repairs and refurbishments was boosted by a $100 check from Association member George W. Marston. “The Park Board,” California Garden magazine observed, “has always showed itself more than sympathetic with the Floral Association, and there is every reason to expect it to continue to support every good effort put forth by the Association.”   ~ Nancy Carol Carter

May 1923  Volume 14  Number 11

A Home for The Floral Association at Last

Through the many years of its existence, the San Diego Floral Association has wandered over the face of San Diego leaving its beneficent touch on garden after garden, sowing the seeds of the love of beautiful growing things and the knowledge of their culture, meeting here and there, having a mailbox number as an address, sometimes owning a desk in this office or that, but never having a home. The thing that has saved, that has furnished the cohesion necessary in all volunteer organizations, especially those whose existence is one entirely of public service, has been the desire and the belief in an ultimate home. 

Many ... looked to [Balboa Park] as the possible location. When the Exposition of glorious memory closed, [the Floral president] tried for the Model Farm but very properly it went to [John Morley] Park Superintendent as a home ... [D]uring the past year when it became obvious that the Park Board interpreting the sentiment of the City wished to house in these Exposition Buildings organizations of a sympathetic public character, the eye of the Floral Association ... fell upon the Kansas Building and today this building has been granted to the Floral Association by the Park Board under conditions that ensure its continuing absolutely in the public service. 

A picture of the Kansas building is published by the courtesy of the San Diego Union. It is a beautiful building .... 

Nancy Carol Carter is a widely-published historian, a Balboa Park volunteer, a Floral Association board member and associate editor of California Garden.

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © Nancy Carol Carter.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.